Artrosis - Koncert w Trójce
Artrosis - CD Review
Koncert w Trójce
Koncert w Trójce
CD Info
2001
Metal Mind Productions
13 Tracks
13 Tracks
Polish lyrics
I hate live CDs. There’s always something disappointing about them. The recording levels are poor, some of the instruments are overpowering or underplayed, the audiences are nutcases [listen to Type O Negative’s Origin Of The Faeces] and you wonder how certain bands ever got further than playing the Bull & Gate in Kentish Town. I know mine didn’t.
Well, I’ve come across live albums of such poor quality either because I spend too much time buying bootlegs in Camden; record companies take their fans to be indiscriminate wastrels who’d give their bottom dollar to lap up their favourite band’s spilt beer, or because a lot of bands just don’t go the distance live. The live CD is the acid test. It should be the benchmark by which all bands are judged, and if they can’t cut it we can bung them all on the mainstream pyre and watch them burn brightly and die quickly.
Artrosis, on the other hand, have managed to convert me, and this is me, so the situation is equivalent to a Catholic minister trying to convert the most hardened, immovable Satanist. Still, I’ve learned that even the smallest cedilla of open-mindedness can go a long way. This is an amazing album. If it weren’t for the audience [who are so well-behaved and polite they could be at a poetry reading], and the fact that Medeah does go off in a couple of places, you’d think this was a studio album. The quality is that good. Not only that, but the songs are incredible. Every song is different, and the instrumention is just wonderful. From the beginning sequence of Prośba to the closing chords of the grinding and heavy Na Wieki Wieków it was hard not to be riveted.
But there’s something else here. Not a word of this album is in English. This would normally be an immense problem for me, because I like to understand everything that’s going on and I don’t know a word of Polish. Not a sausage. But the music is so good that after a couple of listens it really didn’t matter, it fact, I now find it adds to the album’s allure. You can’t help but see that numbers like Ukryty Wymiar, W Górę and the superb My are all brilliant pieces of song-writing, and whether they’re sung in Polish or Klingon doesn’t matter.
I grant that this concert might have been a ‘good day’ for Artrosis - they might have drunk little else but milk before going on stage and when the recording equipment isn’t on they actually sound like a hydraulic crusher totaling a car, but it’s unlikely. They are a seriously respected and talented ensemble, and this album does nothing but prove that. I never thought I could be converted, but this has made me see the light.
