11/06/07 - I’ve never quite understood the point of live albums. The live album is kind of like cheating on the concert experience, and the songs never sound as good as those that were recorded in a studio. The whole point of a live show is seeing the band, being in the same room with them. In general, live albums seem like an excuse to resell old material that fans already own and entice people to buy it with some previously recorded and unreleased track.

Surprise! That is just what hard rock band Trapt did on their Sept. 18 release Live! The album features nine previously released songs performed live in Minneapolis and two new studio tracks. The studio tracks are okay - nothing too spectacular - basically just what you would expect from Trapt: a decent melody and half-sung, half-screamed vocals.

The live tracks, however, were taken straight from a show, and so the crowd can be heard cheering for the first minute and a half, and there is all that awkward performer-audience small talk going on that the listener isn’t really a part of - especially when the lead singer, Chris Brown says, “It’s good to be playing in a venue like this where I can see everyone’s faces.” He can see me? Dude, that’s creepy. It’s a good thing I’m not in my pajamas right now.

It’s a little bit depressing to be listing to a concert that I wasn’t at, much like getting there after the seats have been sold and the doors locked, and you can only press your ear to the door and hope to get as much from it as you can. The audio for the recording isn’t perfect; the music and introduction interludes fluctuate in volume. That being said, it seems like this Minneapolis show was a pretty fun concert, as neither the band’s intensity level, nor the audience’s ever seems to drop.