Comeback Kid - Through The Noise

'Through The Noise' is another DVD/CD release that came out very recently (I don't know if Victory is doing a whole bunch of these right now or something), this time featuring Comeback Kid, the superstars of the hardcore world. Comeback Kid needs no introduction to most people who will probably read this blog, it seems like everyone has loved them at some point in their exploration of loud music.

In my experience I saw a lot of people begin to ignore them when the original vocalist, Scott Wade, decided to leave the band in 2006. Since then, the vocal duties were taken over by then guitar player Andrew Neufeld, former vocalist of Figure Four. Not a lot of people were very happy with this change, though I never saw much of a difference between them when the first album with Neufeld on vocals was released in 2007, 'Broadcasting', and I found it to be quite the enjoyable album as a whole.

Much like I said with Between The Buried and Me's live DVD, this is definitely a release for the fans. The DVD portion of the release contains a bunch of stuff that people who have followed the band for awhile will appreciate. There is an hour long documentry tackling the history of the band, and then their is a live set filmed in Lepzig, Germany with an accompaning CD of just the audio from that recording.

The problem with this release as compared to BTBAM's is that you quickly realize that the energy of a hardcore show doesn't translate well into live audio format. Typically, hardcore bands are not that concerned with hitting every note perfectly every show, and when you're there, that is certaintly excusable because the energy of a show like that definetely makes up for those losses.

Comeback Kid definitely falls into that generalization. There is a lot of sloppy music on here and when listening to it without the video it just seems to bounce between really good and 'what the hell?'. The video portion is pretty good just because Comeback Kid shows tend to be intense from start to finish, and this 17 song set is just about every song that any Comeback Kid wants to hear.

Some minor irks I have, I don't really like Neufeld's improvization in some songs, and for the most part he doesn't even attempt to try sounding like the records, it's screaming almost the whole time, when on the proper records screaming is used minimally as emphasis not as a majority.

As with most other live albums, this is for Comeback Kid fans, and those who enjoy the band will certaintly want to check this out in some capacity.

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