Customer Reviews

Shadows Fall: The Art of Touring

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

I just bought this DVD today and without finishing it I can safely say I'm going to get rid of it because it's just crap. All the live performances are bootleg, and it basically is a compilation of home movies. Even sadder is your average bootleg is better in quality!

The extras don't have any redeeming value at all - the behind the scenes footage is equally terrible and the video clips are cheesy beyond belief. I've never seen any Shadows Fall videos before but I was blown away by how little thought was put into the video for "Only for the Weak". What's with all the biker people standing around bobbing their heads??? The solo bit in the song was just PAINFUL...

I guess what makes it more shocking to me is I bought Arch Enemy's (they're on the same label, Century Media) Doomsday Machine album with bonus DVD and though it only has 1 video clip and 2 live performances it completely blows this one away!

I don't like talking about bands being sellouts, but to release something this bad officially is selling out to me. You don't release something without the intention of earning something from it. Shame on Century Media for releasing this when they did such a good job on other DVDs (like the Arch Enemy one mentioned above). *sigh*

To be fair to band, they do say on the cover it is a s***ty video. Only get this if you are a diehard fan and must have anything Shadows Fall.

I have been waiting to buy this DVD ever since it was advertised in the bonus DVD of "The War Within" album....The anticipation of watching live footage one of today's best thrash metal bands on my surround stereo system had been building all the way up to the release date...Not to mention I have 3 of their 4 albums, and I saw them live once....I purchased this DVD the day it came out, and with high hopes.....When I started to watch the live footage it made me want a damn refund.....Maybe I was wrong to assume that this DVD would be similar in quality to Slipknot's Disasterpieces (which is f***ing awesome!) but I certainly didn't expect the lack luster production we got on this DVD.....I must say that the 6 music videos on tap are pretty entertaining to watch.....but that's about it .....the Shenanigans/On-the-road antics are just their way of justifying this release.....quite frankly, it started to piss me off after watching it for a while!! We can only hope that in the future Shadows Fall will join a better record label like Roadrunner Records and release a full professionally filmed concert DVD.....until then we will have to make due with this P.O.S.!!

Ouch, a very disappointing DVD. I can't believe we had to wait this long for this thing. I know that it is supposed to have that bootleg feel like "Cliff 'Em All" but this DVD just fails. I can't enjoy any of the songs because it is nearly impossible to distinguish between the instruments. Brian's vocals are barely audible on most tracks. I just don't see the point in making a DVD with audio quality incredibly worse than the CD. The video is very grainy and there's extremely too little zooming in on the band members.

This DVD looks even worse when compared to Shadows Fall's contemporaries. Lamb of God's "Killadelphia" is excellent. The production is crystal clear, the video is clear, the backstage antics in between songs are highly entertaining, the bonus features are interesting, and the Dolby 5.1 blows me away. Why couldn't Shadows Fall get it together like that DVD? They had the same amount of time to work with theoretically.

Poor audio and video quality, no live stuff from "The War Within", and no 5.1 Surround make this DVD something to stay away from. It's a shame too because Shadows Fall is an excellent band that can put on shows with so much energy and excitement. Too bad this DVD makes their live shows look totally boring.

The live clips from their Limited Edition War Within CD have better production than this DVD does, and those clips still didn't have the best sound or video quality either. This is a 1 Star DVD from a 5 star band.

To sum it up, I'm a huge Shadows fan and if you like some contrived, thrown together bootleg concert footage and road antics then this is your video. Oh, and don't let me forget the very poor audio quality. I popped this DVD in after watching Lamb of God's new Killadelphia DVD which set the bar in my opinion for a brilliantly put together metal DVD, which of course didn't help this DVD's rating at all. Hopefully, Shadows Fall will release the polar opposite of this debacle sometime, we'll see.

I would actually give this dvd 4 and a half stars if it would let me. I don't think it's quite 5 stars though because 5 stars is like Iron maidens Rock in Rio and as much as I like this dvd it's not as good as that. for reading reviews on here I was expecting the dvd to suck and almost didn't buy it. ut It's much better than what I expected. It is sorta bootleg looking but it looks like really good bootlegs. The picture on everything is always really clear and the sound although it's not 5.1 or prefessionally mixed like a normal live dvd would be it's still actually really good. It sounds the way it would sound if you were actually at the show and I think that was sort of the intention. Remeber when you go to a live show it's not 5.1 and everything doesn't always sound perfect. As far as comparing it to Cliff Em All it's way better than that quality wise, you don't have to deal with shaky cameras and fuzzy pictures with this dvd. The only complaint I have about the content is I wish they played some of the War Within stuff live. I think that's the best cd in probably 15 years so I was dissapointed not to hear it but the songs they do have on there are some of their best stuff from the other cds. The shenanigans and nonsense between songs are all really funny and a nice addition and having all of their videos on it is really cool too. My favorite part of it though is when they play Walk with Damageplan. I didn't realize until watching it that it was 2 days before Dimebag was killed so it's very possible that this is the last video filmed of him, it's really cool to see him on stage one last time but really sad at the same time, but it's definitly a cool thing to see. Also another one of the coolest things on there is when they cover Motley Crue's Live Wire. I've always loved that song and the version on here is actually better that probably any live version you'll ever find of Motley Crue playing it since Brian actually sings in key the whole time. Overall I'd say that this dvd could have been a little longer and I Really wih they did some war within stuff but other than that I have no complaints about it and highly reccomend it to anyone who is a fan of the band. It's also really cool to see a newer band who are such good musicians. On a musicianship level I don't think there's been an American band since Pantera who can touch these guys.

Shadows Fall's first DVD contains many songs and a lot of bonus features, but compared to its fellow metalcore band's dvds (killswitch and lamb of God), this dvd is very subpar. First of all, it doesn't feature a single live song from 'The War Within', and the live performances are bootleg. I understand that Shadows Fall didn't want it to be a multi-camera perfect sound quality show, but the decision to have poor quality of video was a mistake. The other footage of the band is funny, but is not nearly as hilarious as it could've been, and doesn't tell us anything about the band or its members personality.

I thought this DVD was gonna kick butt but I was wrong, I can't believe they agreed to release it ( a little kid could have done better), besides having a terrible sound the bootleg show killed the DVD, the documantary was boring as hell, one of the worst parts of it was watching one of the guitarrist throwing up on some window, how is that funny?

I just got this and am watching now, the Video camera is very crappy but I give them cudos to making this DVD . They are a great band and I have bought every one of their albums and been to 2 of their concerts, I went to the last show on the War Within tour and the tour before that. They put on a very good live show. The Century media sampler that comes with the DVD has more good bands on it also. I would recommened this DVD only to hardcore Shadows fall fans as most others would just probably throw it out. It is decent but Needs a lot of improvments on the next dvd. Later.

I purchased this DVD at a Hot Topic store many months ago as my interest in Shadows Fall was beginning to peak. After being pulled in by the band's latest and heavily promoted "War Within" CD, I decided to pick up this DVD in hopes of gaining a further look into the fairly unique sound of Shadows Fall. Amidst my excitement at purchasing this DVD, I had one major misconception that would be harshly clarified later.

I assumed the DVD's subtitle "drunk and sh--ty in every city" was nothing more than an increasingly popular band's attempt at being modest amongst all the hype surrounding their music, but I stood corrected as soon as I played this DVD later on that day. Shadows Fall weren't being humble with their collective opinion regarding this DVD; they were being realistic.

Between drunken vomitting and the band reflecting upon the apparent theft of a tire from their tour bus, I realized I'd bought this DVD for the wrong reasons. I was hoping to be provided with some insight regarding the driving force behind this band and to find out more about their music as a whole. Well, I found out more about something, but it wasn't so much their music as it was their affinity for weed, alcohol, and nonstop partying.

Now, Shadows Fall are a rock band, so of course they'll have their share of madness like all the rest. In fact, I'd say that they party rather lightly in comparison to their 70's and 80's counterparts, but I honestly couldn't find a single moment of serious thought or effort in the entire contents of this DVD save the great collection of music videos. Was I expecting to see Brian Fair and company standing in front of the camera giving an exhaustive speech about their sources of inspiration? Hardly, but if I had seen a little less of that nightvision camera capturing everything the band probably regretted doing upon sobriety and a little more intelligent discussion about who they generally are as a group, I wouldn't have felt so ripped off by this DVD. The concert footage is as muddy as it gets (even by the notoriously low standards of most bootlegs), the behind-the-scenes "shenanigans" should've stayed locked away in the vault, and the Dimebag Darrell tribute would've had the man rolling in his grave.

In this reviewer's humble opinion, Shadows Fall should've simply released a collection of their music videos along with some professionally recorded concert footage and called it a day instead of alienating their growing fanbase with all of this pointless nonsense. Probably the only real good I got out of this whole package was the sampler disc included which introduced me to none other than Eyes of Fire.

Shadows Fall are a great band w/ great musicians. I figured a band who prided themselves on the quality of their musicianship would put the same amount of pride in the quality of their DVD release. Like most, I was expecting something on par to L.O.G.'s "Killadelphia" DVD: Quality video and quality sound showcasing the bands ability to deliver the goods live. This fell flat all across the board. It actually put me to sleep! I'm not kidding! For starters, some of this footage was rehashed from the "Limited Edition" War Within bonus DVD. I'm not really into bootleg footage unless that's all that's available, then it'll have to do. I really don't have anything new to say that hasn't been said by anyone else but, I paid about the same price for both "Killadelphia" and this disappointment. In fact I think Killadelphia was a little cheaper. If you're tight on cash and want more bang for your buck get Killadelphia. Sorry Shads. It was cool to see Dime one last time though.
Now that they're on a major hopefully their future releases will be better.