Category: | Review - Magazine | Publish date: | 5/1/1997 |
Source: | Metal Hammer, May 1997 | ||
Synopsis: |
Bad Religion - Tested
by Ian Winwood
Metal Hammer, May 1997
Question: How can a band as good as Bad Religion release an album as bad as this? "Tested" is both a live album and a terrible idea, a tinny rendition of the band's best songs, none of which sound as good as they did on the studio albums. Greg Graffin often sings a full octave lower than he does on those studio albums and by the end of the whole deal, this listener was struck by a burnning, unavoidable question: why?
Bad Religion are an absolutely brilliant live band, but this is an absolutely awful live album. The band themselves, unsurprisingly, don't appear to agree.The liner notes are stuffed with proclamations about how this is different from other live albums, how it was recorded differently and how most live albums aren’t really live anyway, so there.
And in a sense, they are right. Tested is different from other live albums because isn’t as good as other live albums.
But please don’t get the impression that this is a downer on Bad Religion. It’s because they are such a brilliant band that this album is such an unfathomably bad idea. A great deal is made of the fact that Tested is supposed to sound exactly like being at a Bad Religion concert.
This may be true, but it fails to take into account a couple of fundamentally important details. One is that when you see a band live, it’s a one shot deal; you don’t hear the mistakes, you may be drunk, you may be dancing, you may be in the front row and you will certainly be experiencing the show with both eyes and ears.
The second point is that, whilst Tested may sound like a Bad Rligion concert, it certainly sounds like a very quiet one. If you cranked it up to authentic concert volume, your neighbours would take you to court and you would have your stereo equipment impounded.
I know reviewers always say this, but for a band as fantastic as Bad Religion, this really is a terrible disappointment.