701. Black Label Society / Unblackened. 2013. 2/5

I can only say that I went into this album with some serious reservations as to what I was going to encounter once the disc hit my CD player. I mean, the 'unplugged' album craze that started in the early 1990's with the help of MTV was something that, for many bands, worked really well to showcase their music in a different arena, and certainly Seattle bands such as Nirvana and Alice in Chains efforts were truly brilliant. But then it began to seep into the heavy metal genre, and you just knew that things could only get very very bad when that started to happen. Why? Well, did you really need to have Queensrÿche doing songs unplugged, just because "Silent Lucidity" had become such a huge single hit? No, you did not. And then, as the decade wore on, we even had the mega-huge metal bands such as Metallic and Megadeth performing parts of their concerts in an unplugged setting. Seriously - I did not have to hear "Motorbreath" or "Symphony of Destruction" unplugged, I just need to hear it at a thousand decibels and at a hundred miles an hour. Just because "Nothing Else Matters" somehow becomes your biggest single hit doesn't mean you need to trash your other brilliant songs.
So we come to this album, a live set by Black Label Society, stripped back to a certain degree and bringing forth not only a form of heavy metal music that I generally abhor (the afore-mentioned 'unplugged' set), but with it the mix of already recorded slow instrumental-type songs that are my least favourite part of the BLS armoury, and brilliant faster paced BLS songs, but in a slowed down acoustic driven atmosphere. So did this album really ever have a chance with me?

Without dragging this review out into the dark depths of time, I am as disappointed with this release as I have been with almost ever Black Label Society album since 1919 Eternal. The musicianship is just superb, with the whole band sounding just fantastic. Zakk once again showcases all of his skills, from his piano playing to his fine guitar work, and especially in some of the solo sections where he improvises and extends to guitar junkies delight. The sound engineering and mixing is terrific, and the album sounds wonderful as a result. But it is slow and melancholy and with every acoustically driven song in the BLS catalogue, and it just downright bores me to tears to listen to it. At just on two hours for the double disc set, you can't help but find yourself yawning profusely by the time the end finally arrives.
Perhaps the greatest damning effect of this is what has been done to arguably one of the band's finest songs, "Stillborn". It has been drawn out to a molasses-stretching almost nine minutes, ridding itself of all of the speed and heaviness of the original, with Zakk moaning his way through the vocals before substituting a four minute solo break in the middle to perhaps try and make up for what they have done to the song. Zakk's guitaring is great, but it has monstered what I consider a classic song.

I'm sure there are many fans out there up for this, who enjoy Zakk's slower material, and will as such find this to be a masterpiece. For me, I think this may well be the final nail in the coffin when it comes to Black label Society releases. It has been over a decade now that I have been hoping for more, and on most occasions I come away feeling massive disappointment. That is no reflection on the material as such, just that it is just not what I enjoy listening to. With that being the case, it is probably time to close the cover and move on.