Search - Switchblade Symphony - Sweet Live Witches on DVD

A nice souvenir of a great band

No1Crush | Alberta, Canada | 07/19/2004

(4 out of 5 stars)

"I was delighted to see this DVD, it may not be earth-shatteringly great, but it's better than nothing. The quality of the Tokyo show was indeed taken from a "raw bootleg" - literally recorded on a handheld camcorder, with poor feedback distortion whenever high notes are sung. The recording of the L.A. show was clear, though not crystal. Nevertheless, it was quite a treat to see a live recording of Switchblade Symphony, considering I'm located in an out-of-the-way city where such bands very rarely perform. They played with great passion and joy and interacted well with the audience, particularly in the Tokyo gig. It's a shame both shows were short at roughly 25 minutes each.The special features could've been more thorough. The band bio should've been more detailed than a half-a-dozen line paragraph stating "Susan and Tina met, formed a band and played cool music". The interview in Japan should've been presented in its entirety, rather than a 3 minute snippet. It was nice to see the Clown video digitally preserved for posterity. The bonus footage of Sweet and Witches were from raw camcorder-recorded bootlegs, like the Tokyo show, but for fans of a non-mainstream, fairly underground goth band, this too is a treat. Considering that a DVD can hold 4 gigabytes of info (or 4 hours worth of video), there could've been so much more, like bonus tracks from the extremely rare Scrapbook CD (at least we have the unreleased demo of Novacain here, accompanying the Photo Gallery), more videos (like Dirty Dog), more interviews, more rare photos, etc.This DVD is definitely for hardcore fans, completists and those who are curious about how Switchblade Symphony is like live...not really essential, but a nice souvenir of a very talented band"