Blinded by Faith: Tommy Demers (vocals); Pascal Cote (guitars); Danny Emond (keyboards); Vincent Roy (bass instrument); Julien Marcotte (drums); Daniel Gingras (background vocals).
Recorded in front of an extremely vocal hometown crowd, Imperial Collapse: Live in Quebec City showcases symphonic black metal act Blinded by Faith performing a nearly note-for-note re-creation of most of their 2003 album, Under an Occult Sun, along with a small handful of new songs. It's technically impressive that the band can so thoroughly replicate the double-time blastbeat drumming, tricky time-signature shifts, and fleet-fingered soloing of its studio recordings, but that also adds to this album's sense of airlessness. Songs like "The Dead Don't Talk" and "Behind the Placid Mask of the Starlit Cosmos" have an appealingly old-school sound (think vintage Iron Maiden) that emphasizes catchy riffs and melodic soloing as well as the usual rhythmic pummeling, and singer Tommy Demers' growled vocals never reach the comical extremes of some of his Cookie Monster contemporaries, but only the most die-hard Blinded by Faith fans will find Imperial Collapse: Live in Quebec City particularly arresting. The album also includes a bonus DVD featuring two extra songs. ~ Stewart Mason minimize