Sunday 18 April 2010

Queen - Live Killers (1979)

Tracklist:
1. We Will Rock You
2. Let Me Entertain You
3. Death on Two Legs
4. Killer Queen
5. Bicycle Race
6. I'm in Love with my Car
7. Get Down, Make Love
8. You're My Best Friend
9. Now I'm Here
10. Dreamer's Ball
11. Love of my Life
12. '39
13. Keep Yourself Alive

1. Don't Stop Me Now
2. Spread Your Wings
3. Brighton Rock
4. Bohemian Rhapsody
5. Tie Your Mother Down
6. Sheer Heart Attack
7. We Will Rock You
8. We Are the Champions
9. God Save the Queen

Bleh... - 6/10

Ugh... if there was one album that I did not look forward to to review it’s Live Killers. Despite it being quite a success as Queen’s first live album, it sounds awful in terms of production and sound. Queen’s performance is no doubt excellent, though heavily edited in studio, but fails to impress me because of this terrible production. It’s not as bad as Yngwie Malmsteen’s War to End All Wars, but still annoying. Then exactly what is wrong here? It just sounds like a mess. The vocals seem lost on the background of the mix, the guitars are panned heavily to the right and the drums, especially the cymbals, overrule all other sounds. Deacon’s bass is well audible but nearly merged with the guitars at times. The production is quite bassy.

Alright, on to the actual music. This is all in good condition. Queen is different live than in studio, but not less good. It’s fun to hear Freddie play the audience and the vocal harmonies sound different but has its charms. Since this is still in the 70s, the setlist consists solely of 70s music, which is great. The content is compiled from different concerts, thus not making this album a one-concert performance, which does take away the ambience albums like Live at the Bowl or Queen Rock Montreal do have. According to many sources, testified by existing bootlegs, there were much better concerts in the 70s that could have been released, but instead they assembled Live Killers. I will never say it’s a bad live album, just not good enough for me, despite the good tracks. The one interesting track on here is the opening track "We Will Rock You", which is a fast rock rendition of the anthemic stadium hit everybody knows. But this song also features on later live albums in better production quality.

So, would I recommend this album to anyone? Well, if you desperately search for an official Queen live release of solely 70s material, then I guess you could give Live Killers a go. I would recommend albums like Live at the Bowl or Queen Rock Montreal instead for those who want to hear a good official Queen live album.

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