Corrosion of Conformity-Live Volume: The Movie (2001) (NTSC)

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General		Extras
Category	Music	Trailer-CDs Menu Audio Featurette-Bonus Footage Gallery-Photo Web Links DVD Credits
Rating
Year Of Production	2001
Running Time	82:44
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Ads Then Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	Dennis Gelbaum John D. Menzo
Studio Distributor	Warner Vision	Starring	Pepper Keenan Woody Weatherman Mike Dean Jimmy Bower
Case	Click
RPI	$34.95	Music	Corrosion Of Conformity

    There is really only one reason why Corrosion Of Conformity stuck out as a band whose work I wanted to review - they made a contribution to the 1994 Black Sabbath tribute album in the shape of a cover of Lord Of This World. Only three of the thirteen bands who appear on the Australian version of that album proved that they had the musical skill necessary to so much as play a Sabbath song, let alone put their personal mark on one like Type O Negative. When all is said and done, Corrosion Of Conformity was not among them, although they did fare better than some of the try-hard disasters such as White Zombie or the live insult by Faith No More (a strange occurrence indeed, since the latter normally play some very fine music).

    Forgive me if this sounds like I am bashing the product unfairly - while Corrosion's performance on the aforementioned album didn't have me rushing out to buy their albums, like the Type O Negative one did, they did prove themselves worthy of a day in my court. When all is said and done, Corrosion Of Conformity acquit themselves very nicely on the basis of this performance, even if it does sound a bit bland compared to my normal listening, but the fans do not. To be perfectly blunt, there are shots such as at 24:47 where they look like they are auditioning for a satire game show I once thought up that I call The Biggest Tosser.

    Live Volume - The Movie is basically a recording at Harpo's Concert Theatre in Detroit that was released to coincide with the live album, also entitled Live Volume. The track listing on the back cover doesn't fully coincide with the chaptering - there are about five or six bits of Behind The Scenes material that are encoded as separate chapters, so it can make figuring out which song you're up to a little confusing. In any case, the track list is as follows:

Video

    The video transfer is presented in the aspect ratio of 1.33:1, and is not 16x9 Enhanced. Generally, that is - sometimes we get split-screen footage or the letterboxed introduction, which are in aspect ratios of 2.35:1 or even 2.66:1 such as at 3:55. This is not the only instance where someone behind a video editing desk gets carried away to the detriment of the presentation (more on that in a minute).

    The transfer is in NTSC, which effectively means two things - first, you will need to make sure your equipment can handle this signal in some manner before making a purchase, and secondly, the resolution is about twenty percent less than DVD is capable of under the best circumstances. Nonetheless, the transfer looks very good in spite of this, at least when the video effects aren't getting in the way. The shadow detail is very limited, even poor, but the stage lighting mostly compensates for this, and there is no low-level noise.

    The colours are generally as clean and clear as the source material and the stage lights allow. No composite artefacts were noted, but one of the annoying video effects used at 41:06 resulted in splotches of psychedelic colour appearing on the picture for a few seconds.

    MPEG artefacts were not apparent in this transfer. Film-to-video artefacts consisted of minor aliasing, although this effect was somewhat distressing when the neck of Pepper Keenan's guitar began to look like a string of diagonal pixels at 5:33. Considering that there was no shimmer to speak of, this was okay. The most annoying artefacts were the video effects, with warping of the picture and an artificial film frame misalignment during the intro being the most irritating. I suspect that this footage was taken with some kind of NTSC video camera, as there are no film artefacts whatsoever.

    No subtitles are available on this DVD.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    There are two soundtracks on this DVD, both of them renderings of the English music. The first, and default, soundtrack is a Dolby Digital 5.1 effort that has been recorded at 448 kilobits per second. The second soundtrack is a Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo effort, recorded at 192 kilobits per second. I listened primarily to the 5.1 soundtrack, which I strongly feel is the only way to listen to music like this when it is physically possible.

    Pepper Keenan's vocals are easy enough to understand, although they won't make a lot of sense without a copy of the lyrics somewhere at hand for the first few listens. I did not detect any real problems with audio sync.

    Being that I am not familiar with Corrosion Of Conformity's catalogue of music, I won't comment too much on it in general except to say that I remember them being a five-piece band sometime around the compilation of the aforementioned Sabbath tribute album. The line-up we have here is a very good one, although I do wonder what it is capable of, given that bassist Mike Dean is also listed as playing the "keys", a difficult task given that he is supposed to be playing bass throughout the live set.

    The surround channels were used mildly, but very effectively, for the ambience of the audience, the drums, and even some of the vocals. While they are not worked especially hard, they do justify their inclusion, and this is the first music-related title I have reviewed for some time with a 5.1 soundtrack that actually sounds like a 5.1 soundtrack. The interview segments collapse into stereo and stay there until the music resumes again, but given that they are generally less than a minute each, this is acceptable.

    The subwoofer was used throughout the show to support the bass drums and the bass guitar. While it is not worked as hard as I would have expected for this hard-grooving style of music, it is definitely there for a purpose, and it fills that purpose without making itself conspicuous.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Menu

    The menu is static, not 16x9 Enhanced, but accompanied by a fairly reasonable Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack.

Photo Gallery

    A two minute featurette with a Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack, this gallery contains numerous stills of the band playing live. I have to ask exactly what the point is, since there is no annotation at all, and next to no historical value.

Featurette - Bonus Footage

    This five minute and thirty second featurette is presented in a 1.33:1 aspect ratio with a Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack that features a constant stream of pops. It is not bad overall, as it gives some idea of how long this line-up has been together, but it is nothing of great value.

CD Trailer

    An advertisement for the Live Volume CD that is available separately, which cannot be skipped when it appears before the menu. It is in an approximate 1.66:1 aspect ratio with Dolby Digital 2.0 audio. It is not 16x9 Enhanced.

Web Links

    Links to the official Corrosion Of Conformity and Sanctuary Records sites.

DVD Credits

    A singular page listing the people who put together the contents of this DVD.

    Information about this title is hard to find online, but I was able to discern that Sanctuary Records titles are distributed by BMG in America. Whether this will affect the usual state of music videos being very similar in all Regions (this title is coded for all Regions anyway) is unknown at this point.

    I did not have high hopes when I first sat down to watch Live Volume: The Movie, but Corrosion Of Conformity have proved to be worthy of a listen, and even a good deal of respect. While the music is sometimes a little repetitive, it does get an A for bringing in some seriously hard grooves.

    The video transfer is okay, but the effects used by the people who made the feature are annoying.

    The audio transfer is very good.

    The extras are minimal.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall