Staind: Live From Mohegan Sun Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		3.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		1.5
Overall		3.5

Staind: Live From Mohegan Sun Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman August 16, 2012

Could someone out there please let Aaron Lewis know he’s a Rock God? For virtually all of this Staind Live From Mohegan Sun Blu-ray, captured on November 25, 2011 as the band set out on tour for the first time with their then new drummer Sal Giancarelli, Lewis seems to be largely unaware that he’s performing before throngs of screaming fans. He’s incredibly “interior” for the bulk of this concert, literally hanging on to the microphone and stand with his eyes firmly shut, singing as if to satisfy some inner muse and evidently not caring one whit about the more or less real world “out there”. When Lewis does open his eyes and make contact with the audience, it’s in ironic moments like his solo rendition of “Country Boy”, a narrative song which sums up Lewis’ philosophy as more or less, “I ain’t no rock star, so don’t try to pigeonhole me that way.” In an interview included on this Blu-ray as a supplement, the band seems both slightly amazed but ultimately nonplussed that they’re celebrating their seventeenth year as successful musicians. Staind is yet another band that came up through the trenches their own way, self-releasing their first album (with evidently only 4,000 units pressed, which sold out quickly, according to the same interview), and then matriculating into a more relatively mainstream presence, with several gold and platinum albums resulting (including a handful that have made it all the way to Number 1 on the Billboard charts), and some moderately successful singles, as well as one standout chart buster, “It’s Been Awhile”. But through it all, Lewis has seemed almost preternaturally unaffected by fame and fortune. He isn’t a swaggering hard rock bad boy, like so many others in this genre. He does indeed seem more like a “good ol’ boy”, a simple backwoods guy who doesn’t have anything to prove and leaves the stage antics to his bandmates while he closes his eyes and croons to some unseen entity.

Mohegan Sun is one of those giant casino cum performance venues that have blossomed throughout the United States in some sort of bizarre but obviously profitable attempt to return to various Native American tribes some semblance of all that was taken from them in the days of “Eminent Domain”. This particular development has a fairly immense arena, one which seats some 12,000 people, and while it isn’t clear just how many “seats” are taken in this Staind concert (seating being a relative term since most of the audience is standing for the bulk of the concert), there’s little doubt there are several thousand fans in attendance.

The band’s stage presence is at once electrifying but also strangely low key at times. Aside from Lewis, who seems to be in his own private world, lead guitarist Mike Murshok and bassist Johnny April are the main visual attractions. Both with longish hair, and prone to thrashing around in time with the music so that their tresses wave to and fro rhythmically, they provide a kind of odd visual counterpoint to Lewis’ “stick in the mud” approach. But in terms of sheer visceral energy, there’s little doubt that newish drummer Sal Giancarelli wins the Gold Medal. Giancarelli is an incredibly aggressive percussionist, whacking out formidable beats with precision and an almost manic approach, as if he’s trying to subdue his drum set into submission.

While Staind has achieved a certain reputation in the hard rock world, the really interesting thing throughout this concert is seeing how seemingly more receptive the audience is to the band’s “kinder, gentler” side in its ballads or less aggressive offerings. There seems to be considerably more response to outings like the aforementioned “Country Boy” (where Lewis goes seriously out of tune with his vocals before regaining his footing) and “Outside” than their more down and dirty tunes. Another kind of funny thing that becomes evident in this concert is Lewis’ voice, which has often been compared to Eddie Vedder’s. Some out there may think I’m just slightly off my rocker when I say this, but listen carefully to this concert and see if you don’t agree that at times Lewis sounds surprisingly like a just slightly more gravelly Hootie from Hootie and the Blowfish. I know that has probably just blown Staind’s rock “street cred” for some, but by about halfway through this entertaining if non-showy live performance, it was a comparison I couldn’t help but make.

Staind Live From the Mohegan Sun contains the following songs:

• 01. Eyes Wide Open
• 02. Falling
• 03. Right Here
• 04. Throw It All Away
• 05. Spleen
• 06. Fade
• 07. Failing
• 08. So Far Away
• 09. Crawl
• 10. Country Boy
• 11. For You
• 12. Paper Wings
• 13. Outside
• 14. Not Again
• 15. It’s Been Awhile
• 16. Mudshovel
• 17. Something to Remind You

Staind: Live From Mohegan Sun Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Staind Live at Mohegan Sun is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Eagle Rock Entertainment with an AVC encoded 1080i transfer in 1.78:1. This release carries a warning about the concert's ubiquitous strobe effects and how deleteriously those might affect people with epilepsy. Even with constant lighting changes, and a tendency toward both red and blue in the lighting schemes, posterizing is really at a minimum in this high definition presentation. Close-ups (most of them of Lewis) reveal very good to excellent levels of fine detail. Contrast is a bit problematic, especially in wide shots, where shadow detail is also negligible. Generally speaking, though, this is a very sharp looking concert video, all the more remarkable in that it's often quite dark without a superabundance of stage lighting.

Staind: Live From Mohegan Sun Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Staind Live at Mohegan Sun features two audio mixes, a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround offering and an uncompressed LPCM 2.0 stereo fold down. Both of these audio options present the bass heavy music of Staind with excellent clarity and precision, though the mix here tends to favor the blistering instrumentals, sometimes as the expense of being able to clearly hear Lewis' growled vocals. The 5.1 mix is nicely splayed across the front channels, with the crowd noises relegated to the rear channels. Fidelity is excellent and dynamic range is at times quite wide, especially when the band veers from its supposed head banging material to its more reflective, quasi-acoustic ballads.

Staind: Live From Mohegan Sun Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Interview With the Band (1080i; 30:59) is an interesting outdoor sit down with Aaron Lewis, Mike Mushok and Johnny April. The three go over the history of the band and impart some unexpected information, like the fact that future collaborator (and producer) Fred Durst originally wanted Staind booted off of a shared bill because he felt they were Satan worshippers.


• Mike Mushok's Live Rig (1080i; 5:18) is a brief but informative look at Mushok's collection of guitars.

Staind: Live From Mohegan Sun Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Staind Live at Mohegan Sun is a good overview of the band's seventeen year history, but some who are used to rock bands providing mega-stage shows may be surprised at how relatively restrained this outing is. Yes, there are lots of lighting effects, including the aforementioned strobe sequences which may in fact present health issues for some viewers, but overall this is a curiously "retro" concert that doesn't really feature big pyrotechnics or even much stagecraft. Instead, we get the band simply standing up there on the stage and moving from one song to the next without a bunch of commentary or extraneous business. Lewis is an appealing front man, even if he is incredibly introspective. The star of this concert, though, is unquestionably new drummer Sal Giancarelli, who delivers a blisteringly effective performance on the skins. This release offers good video and great audio, and it comes with one extended interview supplement that is fun and informative. For Staind fans if for no one else, this release comes Recommended.