After more than 20 releases in their career, among those you’ll find eight full-length efforts and one DVD, Poland’s best selling metal act Behemoth returns with their first live album. The album works as a best of compilation since it includes: 5 tracks from their last album “The Apostasy”, 4 from “Demigod”, 1 from “Zos Kia Cultus”, 2 from “Thelema 6”, 2 from “Satanica” and 2 from their black metal past (“From The Pagan Vastlands”, “Summoning Ov The Ancient Gods”). Recorded in Paris after their successful participation in Ozzfest’s second stage in 2007, the album shows the band in great shape with Inferno destroying the drum kit!

The sound here is excellent and all tracks are played in full speed and with great enthusiasm by the band that seems to enjoy the hype that follows their name the last years. All their fans will be satisfied with this result but I have to name 2 complaints: 1) Regain presents this as the best death metal album ever released! Probably they haven’t heard “When Satan Lives” or “Entangled In Chaos”, 2) Why should an extreme act become so mainstream? It reminded me kind of the recent Nile performance: getting more and more into the typical heavy metal attitude and leaving the extreme metal past behind; wanting to be a member of a larger metal community, something that lacks the true death metal spirit in my opinion (major example the meaningless drum solo).

Even so, this is much better to listen to than the latest Satyricon for instance and it’s still a good release for non-death metal fans that would like something from Behemoth and fans that first listened to death metal in the ’00s. The special metalbox case has some gifts like a guitar pick (!) and 2 bonus tracks (one being Turbo Negro’s “I Got Erection”).