Man I love live recordings. I just love the idea of hearing what a band sounds like live w/o all the adrenaline of actually being there. I recently picked up acouple extremely rare live albums in Krisiun "conquering america 98" and Incantation "Blasphemy in Brazil"
Yeah, Europe really needs to do something about all of that techno. It's stinking everything else up.
It's just something about how the kick drum resonates that ruins it for me in the live recordings, I love the live sounds but the percussion distracts me too much as it translates to the receiver.
I see where you're coming from, and I know exactly the live recordings you're referring to. The snare and bass drum can be very clicky and it can take away from the performance. I think it totally depends on the production b/c there are some very good live albums out there where the drums sound nearly studio quality. Obituary's "Dead" being a great example. That live album is spectacular on all fronts.
Samael at one point was a great black metal band. They had an incredibly evil sound and were def. on their way up. Then they just went crazy and started playing that techno crap. I actually saw em about 5-6 years back right after they made the first techno album. They had jugglers and such on the stage w/ them and it was downright bizarre. Earlier in the night I was backstage w/ Monstrosity, and the jugglers were practicing and such...it was like a circus!
The imagery doesn't surprise me, but the idea of corrupting such a cool sound like that... it's like the European music industry is being run by Skynet. Not just the electronic music, but many bands in Europe do this. Anathema, one of my favorite doom bands, turned into an alternative band. That is just sacreligious to me. Oh well. Ideals were meant to be trampled, I guess.