As we wait with bated breath for album five, Baltimore chuggernauts Misery Index give us Live In Munich – recorded in Germany on the Full Of Hate festival tour with Behemoth, Cannibal Corpse and Legion Of The Damned last year.
Live albums have a frustrating tendency to be nothing more than musical compost, a big pile of decomposing filler mulched together just to keep you busy while a band gets the finger out and finishes a ‘real’ album, but Misery Index’s debut live effort is utterly crushing.
Souped up and polished enough to cut clean through the air like a road drill, but tough and raw enough to capture the intensity and guttural fury of their live show, while posing a threat to your best speakers, Live In Munich is perhaps a more accurate representation of the band now than any studio recording.
Just about every track is preceded by bassist/vocalist Jason Netherton’s spluttering calls for the crowd to go apeshit, and within about 10 seconds of say, The Illuminaught, Traitors, or The Carrion Call, it’s hard not to oblige.
