Customer Reviews

Scarred

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Gary Numan has become a pioneer in the electronic world, influencing rocksters and Synthpopsters, EBM-sters and Industrialites. After having heard boring regular live album after boring live album, I purchased Scarred. It's perfect I tell you, perfect. The album is packed with so many treats that its incredible. The only thing lacking is the seemingly monotonous tonal structure, too industrialish, but at any rate it is filled by powerhouse songs like 'Metal' and the ever so wonderful 'Little Invitro' to make the air around you quiver with sorrow. I have not heard a live album better than this even though the vocals are a bit more present than what they should be. I say buy it now or get slapped.

OK, OK, I know we Numanoids aren't exactly the most objective of reviewers. But that all aside, WOW. This is a truly great live album, and I can easily see myself listening to it time and again in the future.

It's hard to choose Gary's most admirable attribute. I suppose the glue that holds his vast catalog together is the unfailing excellence of his songwriting. Even though most of us 'Mercans think only of "Cars" as his songwriting peak, Numan's written literally scores of excellent tunes, many of which easily live up to and surpass that high mark.

This live set is a thoughtful culling of some of his best and most offbeat. Oldies like "Films" and "This Wreckage" receive an updated re-tooling here, though the focus is on his superlative recent three studio albums. Gary's pushed himself to a true artistic renaissance lately, and the intensity and accuracy of his voice in concert has absolutely never been better. While Gary doesn't seem fully engaged on some of his live albums (The Skin Game comes to mind first), he really rips it up on Scarred.

The best part of the album is the gorgeous pair of songs at the end. "Dance," the discarded title track to his 1981 studio album is perhaps Gary's most achingly desperate lyric, with a melody that I haven't been able to get out of my head since its first release in 1999. Following this up with the plaintive and powerful "Tracks," he closes the record with a blast of his greatest power: subtlety.

I can't recommend this album enough to the Numan fan. Even if you're only coming to hear "Cars," though, you're sure to be impressed with Numan's mastery of the dark electronic/metal hybrid that he's been working on during the past decade or so.

I had the good fortune of seeing Gary Numan twice on his "Pure" world tour in 2000-01. I only recently found out that there was a live album from that tour, and immediately ordered it, sound unheard. I was not disappointed! Gary Numan's critically acclaimed 'comeback' album Pure cast him in a somewhat new daylight, with lots more guitars and even darker sounds than we were ever used from him.

"Scarred" (2 CDs, 21 tracks, 97 min.) brings the complete London Brixton Academy show from October 2000. The set starts off with a sizzling "Pure". While it is followed by the familiar "Me I Disconnect From You", the majority of the songs after that focus on the Pure album, with gems like "Rip", "I Can't Breathe", "Prayer for the Unborn" and "Listen To My Voice", but also a great "Angel Wars" (from the Exile album). "Down in the Park" is recast and sounds greater than ever, as is "Replicas" (check out that stomping intro!). The obligatory "Cars" is here of course, but it truly is not one of the better songs on here. Numan has moved on from "Cars" and he is (and we are) the better for it. The 'new' Gary Numan brings us an overall sound that's somewhere in between of NIN's industrial rock and Depeche Mode era-"Songs of Faith and Devotion" (another synth band that discovered guitars, but Numan brings yet more guitars), and it just works great. It's telling that the CD cover shows Numan with a guitar, as if to convery that this is not the same ol', same ol'.

I also have the 1979 "Living Ornaments" live album of Gary Numan, and both that album and "Scarred" show Gary Numan at his very best. If you can accept the fact that 21 years after "Living Ornaments" Numan is not just about "Cars", you are in for a treat. Strongly recommended!

You gotta bless companies like Eagle Records, ones that know what to offer customers willing to part with twenty bucks these days. Here we get lots of songs, extra videos and an attractive sleeve: reasons to make traditional purchases like this without feeling "ripped off."

This dazzling, majestic live album is Gary Numan at his best, playing old stuff, as well as new, and reminding the music world how to best coalesce guitars and drums with electronics.

Strong song-writing, well-produced live sounds and masterful showmanship make this one a must!

This must be one of the best mixed live albums I've ever come across. Everything right so you can sit in the dark, crank up the volume and absorb yourself into the powerful wall of sound that Gary Numan projects these days. Pure brings the band on stage with a passion that is familiar with every Gary Numan show.Mixture of new songs and reworked old songs combined as if they were all written only yesterday. Gary shows no sign that he's been in the business for 25 years and sounds as fresh as ever.....Only real draw back is, lack of visual.....nevermind, well worth a repeat listen.....

Proof that Numan is relevant into the new millenium. Usually on live albums, the audience and poor quality interfere. The quality is outstanding. Both recent and older works have the same immediacy. The coherence of two decades of work is admirable.

The majority of people I run into either don't know who Gary Numan is, or have only heard "Cars." I definately would recommend trying this live album out if you haven't had the opportunity to hear some of his other work. Even though Numan shines in the recording studio with his rig, the live shows with the full band adds a new flavor to his music. If you enjoy electronic music mixed with heavy distortion, then this is the show for you.

I've been following Numan for years, and all other live releases don't come close to the quality of music from Scarred. All I have to say, is thanks to Gary Numan for finally releasing a great live performance!

this has to be one of his best live recordings available...the sound quality is incredible, and the mood of the recording is beautifully dark and brooding...Gary has chosen a prominent electro/Goth style that works very well for him...He has been able to successfully re-invent himself time and time again....and this recording proves it..I have both the original german pressing and the US version (enhanced)...and I find the sound of the german version a little better....you be the judge..

For a guy who's cult and not rolling in zillions anymore, Numan puts out a ton of product, most of it welcome. He's released live albums of nearly every tour, many of them double-disc sets like this one from his 2000 Pure tour.

Easily one of the best-sounding sets, with an excellent song selection from his later work and his early classics. The old tracks are given a new treatment in Numan's current goth-industrial-heavy style, which is more Numan than anything he did in the mid-80s-early-90s. Highlights are Films, which sounds like it uses the Desire drum loop, live, Metal, which gets a fitting overall as a hard overture of a re-vision, and Replicas, which sounds like it came right off Exile. The later material translate well enough to stage, using a lot of tape loops and effects behind the band. The hypnotic beats of Exile (that same drum loop) are also found...

Definitely for new and old fans and the curious, it's a very pleasant surprise for the unfamiliar. One of the best jobs of updating old songs in a new style and fitting seamlessly.

If you love industrial based music, that from and that Gary has influenced, this is probably the best live album you can own.