DVD Review: Ending is the Beginning: The Mitch Lucker Memorial Show

I've already put my foot in my mouth several times while discussing the passing of Mitch Lucker, so I'm going to do my level best to keep this review to the show itself and not discuss the man. That sounds like it'd be hard to do, but truth be told if you've never even heard of Mitch Lucker that shouldn't deter you from giving this a shot. Outside of the token "This is for Mitch!" shoutout from each vocalist, this event really didn't seem to be weighed down by long winded memorials or slideshows (like, let's say, the Jeff Hanneman dirge). They paid tribute to the man the way he lived, by airing their grief out through music.

Enter the music critic.

The show is organized essentially as a timeline, starting from the original EP going through to the last record with Mitch, 2011's The Black Crown. It gives a nice sense of how the material evolved, from the band's standpoint, guitar solos start popping up with more frequency as the show progressed but I'd be lying if I didn't say I still found the novelty of all the vocalists coming on and off stage didn't add up to much. Almost all of the Suicide Silence songs are sung by vocalists from the death metal scene, so all of the potential variations on the material add up to essentially the same thing. Some are more captivating than others, Jonny Plague impressed with his command of the crowd for instance, but by the time we got to people like Tim Lambesis (another person whose character we aren't going to get into here) and Chad Grey (PLEASE REUNITE MUDVAYNE AND DUMP HELLYEAH ALREADY) it was too little too late in terms of some much needed variety. The encore is an entirely different beast. All of a sudden we get cover songs, and much more eclectic voices such as Machine Head's Robb Flynn, Max Cavalera from, well, a lot of bands, and Lamb of God's Randy Blythe. We even, in probably the weirdest moment on the whole disc, get Mitch Lucker in a performance that cuts back and forth from Mitch in a file video to the band on stage. I don't know how that was pulled off in the room, but I assume it had to be smoother than on the disc. Still, Robb Flynn's acoustic cover of Black Sabbath's Die Young is very touching, it would've been nice to see a few more performances like it throughout, and closing on Randy Blythe fully in control of a crowd is as good of a closing note as any.

This is a really good concert that is just a bit repetitive. I'm sure that those moreso into the deathcore scene than I will not find that to be an issue like I did, but they were probably buying this release anyways. Even for newbies, there's plenty to dig into here. Well worth a look.