Long time they made our mouths watering. Now it is done and the very first live DVD of TYPE O NEGATIVE is seeing its light of day. Satanically green and with piercing eyes Symphony For The Devil promises much, yeah! … And quite disappoints.

The DVD is wrapped in a nice paper box but already the booklet lets your smile dying away: 4 pages in black, white font. Content: personnel, equipment, credits for the live crew and technical support, plus words of gratitude of each band member, which are – at least – cynical, as we know from TYPE O NEGATIVE. That’s all. Nothing else to find there.

The live recording itself emerges as an already dusty relic from 1999. It is the TYPE O NEGATIVE live appearance on the 13th Bizarre Festival in Cologne, Germany. Ok, the scenery is definitely impressive: during a wonderful sunset headstrong and mostly polarizing New York based quartet enters the stage in front of 50,000 or 60,000 people? But before the show gets really kicked off the willing fan has to struggle through many taped gimmicks, showing crazy fans honoring his faves or snapshots of partly really funny scenes reflecting life on tour. What touched me personally was a lovely “snog”-scene with Darrell „Dimebag“ Abbott (RIP my dear). And these flashes go through the entire DVD presentation. Not after each single track but often enough to retard an unconfined live pleasure. That’s bad, since especially this show deserves full attention: TYPE O NEGATIVE present themselves in top form with a great setlist, are neither too drunk nor pissed off of anything.
Setlist: In The Flesh, Cinnamon Girl, Waste Of Life Intro, Too Late: Frozen, In Praise Of Bacchus, Kill All The White People, Cornucopia, Wolf Moon, Everything Dies, My Girlfriend’s Girlfriend, Are You Afraid?, Gravity, Black Sabbath Intro, Christian Woman, Love You To Death, Black # 1

The menu is simple. Besides usual stuff like setup and single track choice a category is entitled “Other Stupidities” and offers an uncommented image gallery beginning with baby photos (how cute), graduation (Pete Steele in suit with a huge bow tie) first band activities up to the first TYPE O NEGATIVE pics anywhere in 1990 and around; some text used as bios and a 26 minutes interview with the entire band, where key wiz Josh Silver acts to be introverted and looks like sleeping, axe man Kenny Hickey is the jokester with (a really vein) drummer Johnny Kelly laughing his ass off. Pete Steele is indulging in strange argumentations and verbal “flashes”. In between, if the listener/watcher is attentive and the sound not overturning, one can hear out interesting facts and attitudes and see unusual sides of the member’s personalities.

Symphony For The Devil contains a bonus CD with a to date unreleased one-track-medley of 3 Santana songs: Evil Ways, Oye Como Va and Black Magic Woman. Sounds interesting ;)

All things together I’d say Symphony For The Devil is, as already mentioned, quite disappointing. I’m sure there is live material from the Life Is Killing Me live-era available they could have put on this DVD too. Then the fan would get an all-embracing work-exhibition. It also wouldn’t have done any harm to put the official videos on Symphony For The Devil, even the old ones. The only thing that keeps me upright is the distinctive, typically trenchant sarcasm and the grandiose – even if fragmented – live show. And... I didn’t get rid off the feeling that TYPE O NEGATIVE not only don’t take themselves serious but especially twit the just-in-front-of-the-tube-sitting fan ;) With fan bonus 7.5 points. Cheers!