The Misfits - Dea.d. Alive!
After Jerry Only’s somewhat lackluster vocal performance on 2011’s otherwise enjoyable big return, The Devil’s Rain, I wasn’t sure I really wanted to hear a new live album, presumably without any studio magic to support his voice. And one that features zero Danzig-era songs? That’s a tough sell, even to a Fiend Club lifer like me, and really seems like a stupid move. At just a cunt hair (remember those, anyone?) over 40 minutes, this set wasn’t that long anyway, so a few classics to beef it up seems so obvious that there must have been a reason, either legal or financial, that they weren’t included. Why there are only a handful of Graves-era songs (half the 14 cuts are from The Devil’s Rain) is another mystery. As would be expected, Only’s singing here is… not the best. I hate to be mean to Jerry, because he really tries hard, and all these songs are energetic, but there are a hell of a lot of rough edges, and not just vocally. The recording, for example, is clear enough, but all the guitar is on one side/channel/speaker, and all the bass (which is distorted and loud) on the other. I’ve played bass for a quarter of a century, and I love it. There is no such thing as too much bass! But mix the fucking sound together! Total separation of every instrument is a terrible idea. And even that might be okay if the playing weren’t so sloppy. The band clearly wanted this particular show because it was done on Halloween (in NYC), so I suppose that using a different recording was out of the question, but even if they didn’t want to do any studio overdubs (which admittedly does kinda seem like cheating, and in any case isn’t very Punk), a different mix (hell, any mix!) could have made quite a difference. As it stands, the best sounding song here is probably the cover of “Science Fiction/Double Feature.” Yeah, the Rocky Horror song. It may sound as if I hate Dea.d. Alive!, and that’s not the case at all. After, let’s say, thirteen spins, I more or less got used to the unmix, slop, and vocal issues, so more than anything else, it’s the missing songs that really bring this album down. Live Misfits with no “Last Caress,” “Where Eagles Dare,” “London Dungeon,” a dozen others, or especially “We Are 138”?! They should have included some of those early songs, no matter how many bags of kitty litter Danzig demanded for them.
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