It isn’t very often that I have the patience to watch concert DVDs in their entirety. After all, isn’t the main reason to watch a concert to experience the music live?

I usually find myself getting psyched for the first two songs, and then right after that I start to get sleepy. It’s for this reason that I have stopped buying concert DVDs in the past year or so. However, I have noticed that this format has gone through some pretty big upgrades. Most new DVDs boast some fancy packaging, loads of bonus material, and superior visual and audio technology.

So when Dismember’s latest DVD, Under Bloodred Skies (Regain), came across my desk at work, I figured what the hell. After all, Dismember are fucking awesome.

WATCH THE UNDER BLOODRED SKIES PREVIEW BELOW

Under Bloodred Skies features two discs packed with material. The first disc contains the standard, main concert footage shot with multiple cameras at last year’s edition of Germany’s brutal Party.San Open Air Festival.

Like Dismember’s studio albums, you pretty much know what you’re going to get: top-notch Swedish death metal, with that particular chainsaw guitar tone. This is a band that doesn’t require any special effects or any stage props (though I love how they hang Iron Maiden, Judas Priest and Motorhead posters on their amps) to get their lethal message across (though the occasional “headliner” treatment of pyro is present). Overall, their live show is presented quite accurately here and the video/audio quality is definitely top notch.

But it’s disc two—entitled Death Metal & More Mental Illness—which really held my attention. It may seem like a standard bonus disc with a documentary and backstage footage, but it also contains footage from a concert in the Netherlands during the Masters of Death tour (with Unleashed, Grave and Entombed).

The accompanying documentary features in-depth interviews with every member of the current band. It gives a pretty good look at their 20 years together and the band, and is a nice update from their last DVD, Live Blasphemies.

In pure Dismember humor there’s a large amount of footage of the guys playing ridiculous jokes on each other and the fans. Without spoiling anything, I want to mention the amazing montage of the band headbanging with anything they could find, as well as an amusing bit with new drummer Thomas Daun brushing his teeth.

Overall, Dismember’s latest DVD offering is definitely a golden one. The playing is tight, the tone is deadly and the headbanging is, well, as banging as ever. Under Bloodred Skies presents the perfect amount of material for a heavy metal DVD: two concerts, a documentary that isn’t boring or generic, and loads of entertaining bits that really humanize this amazing band. —Henry Yuan