Review of Demented Are Go: Sick Sick Sick / Call Of The Wired

Introduction

My interest in music DVDs has both advantages and disadvantages - I get sent a lot of music discs to review by DVD Reviewer, which is nice - however, I get sent a lot of awful music discs to review, which is not.

My previous experience with discs from Cherry Red Records has not been good, with each one failing to deliver any of the positive qualities of DVD - with dreadful picture quality and equally dire sound, and the content isn`t any better.

It was therefore with serious trepidation that I popped "Demented are Go: Sick Sick Sick/Call of the Wired" into my DVD player, fearing the worst...

Video

For a Cherry Red Records release, the video quality is actually quite good, that`s not to say that it is good, it`s just that you can actually see the band`s playing on this DVD, and there aren`t any white lines across the screen.

The picture is straight from VHS, with a low resolution image, suffering from excessive grain and a lack of detail, but the shows are reasonably well filmed and are at least watchable.

Content wise, it`s standard concert video material - the bands strutting their stuff on stage in front of their adoring (?) fans.

Audio

The soundtrack is presented in Dolby Digital 2.0, and again like the video is a big improvement on other Cherry Red Records releases, although again the quality still falls some way short of what I would consider to be an acceptable standard.

The sound is flat with little bass and depth, but there is only limited compression of the higher frequencies and the lyrics are reasonably understandable (or rather they would be if they were sung by someone who could actually sing).

Musically, the material isn`t really my taste, but was listenable, and the disc contains some of the most amusingly named songs I`ve ever heard. "Call of the Wired" for example includes "Love Sleeps Like A Festering Sore", "Clitoris Bite Boogie", "Mongoloid", "Brand New Corpse" and "Busted Hymen" amongst other sonic gems. "Sick Sick Sick" features more of the same with "Rubber Love" and "Pervy In The Park" etc.

Features

The only "extra" on the disc is a promo for other quality releases from Cherry Red Records.

Conclusion

In summary, this is a step in the right direction from Cherry Red Records, a big improvement on previous releases that I`ve seen, although there is still some way to go. In their defence the artists that they release won`t have high quality recordings of their shows, but at least with this DVD, if you like "Demented Are Go", at least you`ll be able to see them and listen to the concerts.

The picture and sound quality are still in VHS territory, so be warned, this disc really isn`t an advert for DVD, but then again, is "psychobilly" rock ever going to be mainstream enough to get a high fidelity multi-channel release?