W.A.S.P
The Sting (DVD)
5.8
The 80's, a time of good metal and bad metal alike. The 80's produced great bands like Slayer, Sodom, the at one time good, Megadeth and Metallica, and the later 80's bared witness to awesome Death Metal like Death and Morbid Angel. With the good you also got lots of bad, and I mean lots. The MTV friendly slew of hair bands, which for whatever reason are still referred to as metal (seems more like hard rock to me) ruled the airwaves. I'll admit I listened to some of them every now and then, we all did; there's no use in hiding it. During this time there were two main shock-rockers, the all-mighty Ozzy Osbourne and W.A.S.P. According to the little info sheet received with the DVD, Snapper Music, the distributor, claims that W.A.S.P. are the undisputed kings of shock-rock. I guess these guys live in a cave and have never heard of the earlier mentioned Ozzy, or even Alice Cooper for that matter. As you can see I'm not too big a fan of W.A.S.P. Their shock tactics were interesting, like the saw-blade cod-piece I'm sure most of you have heard of at one time or another, but the music to me was always bland and forgettable. Despite all that, I still went into this dissection open-minded. Well I popped in the DVD and let the show begin. The production is decent, not top-notch but good. It began by showing shots of the dark stage and the eager crowd. Then W.A.S.P. took the stage with front man, Blackie Lawless, taking a torch and lighting a prop of their logo on fire. After this they went straight into the song, Helldorado. This band originated in the 80's and it shows through and through. Despite the fact that Helldorado was released in 1999 it still has that 80's hair band feel to it. It has the catchy chorus, the wicked solos, the works. Watching the live show progress I was happy to say that at least Blackie no longer sports that awful skunk stripe in his hair. As they came to the song Wild Child and watching Blackie, a forty maybe fifty something, year old guy sing about how he's a wild child almost brought a tear to my eye. It's sad really. Anyways back to the show. The show progressed smoothly with each song and eventually came to the song, The Real Me. During this song Blackie began to straddle the exaggerated microphone stand and it began to move around like a mechanical bull. As it was doing this sparks began flying from both sides, all the while with Blackie continuing to sing the song. I kept hoping Blackie would maybe fall off so the show would end, but seeing as there were still two more songs to go I knew this wasn't going to happen. Finally W.A.S.P. came to their most well-known song, I Wanna Be Somebody. Blackie had the whole crowd singing along for the chorus and at the end he picked up a skull and proceeded to drink the fake blood inside. After this they left the stage, but came back shortly for the encore with Blind in Texas. Then finally the show came to an end. I rejoiced and proceeded to check out the extras, and I have to say they suck. For the extras you can scroll through some pictures of the set you just watched. To me it just seems really lame, but whatever floats your boat I guess. Next I proceeded to check out the complete discography. It shows all the songs, the release dates and all that fun stuff. Also you can check out some web links and choose in which audio version you would like to watch the DVD in. It supports 5.1 sound. Well, I have to say that despite the fact that I still do not like W.A.S.P. the DVD was pretty descent, except the crappy extras. They seem to put on a good show; it's just not for me.
