I KILLED THE PROM QUEEN MANAGE TO SCREW OVER THE ONLY PEOPLE THAT LIKE THEM ON SLEEPLESS NIGHTS AND CITY LIGHTS

Oh, I Killed the Prom Queen… Was there ever a band that more perfectly exemplified all that went wrong with metalcore? Their Swedish fast parts segueing into mediocre-to-offensively-bland breakdowns, flaccid clean vocals, “I WANNA SOUND MEAN!!!” angry vocals, horrible puns for song titles, and a nod to all the shitty high school kids that their music is geared to right in their name perfectly summed up all that was wrong with bad metal and bad hardcore being pounded into one ugly lump of clay. Not much of what the band did was defensible, and their 2007 breakup didn’t exactly summon a moment of silence from the metal world. For their mourning fan base, a CD/DVD combo of the band’s last hometown show was planned but delayed several times before it’s eventual release last November in Europe and last Tuesday here in the States. By the sounds of the CD half of the package, though, perhaps it should have been delayed even longer. So, part of the band’s last actions as a unit involved giving a sloppy, half assed wave goodbye to the ones that supported them over their tenure on the metalcore circuit. Think what you want about the band (it’s certainly clear what I think), but that’s a pretty lousy thing to do.

Now, I will admit that it’s unfair for me to judge Sleepless Nights and City Lights by its songs; chances are, if I didn’t like them in their prepackaged form, I’m not going to have a revelatory experience hearing them on a live album. Sleepless’ issue, though, is that it’s a shitty live album. It sounds like it was recorded on a Radio Shack tape recorder in the back of a mid-sized theatre: the drums are too wet with reverb, the guitars too muddy, the vocals incomprehensible. While I will admit that the album definitely seems to replicate a live experience, it captures all the wrong parts of it, reflecting exactly what I Killed the Prom Queen would sound like at the end of a shitty package tour playing theatres with shitty sound. The audio quality sits in the putrid middle ground of live albums: lacking the rawness of a bootleg, but too filthy to properly capture the band live. Whether or not the songs are your cup of tea, it’s pretty hard to deny that Sleepless Nights and City Lights is unpleasant to listen to.

I suppose one should also ask what makes for a good metal live album. Live metal bands have trouble finding the spot between playing their albums note for note and completely reinterpreting them for a live purposes. KISS actually fiddled with the live sound on Alive in the studio afterward, making the crowds and band sound bigger; however dubious, it made for a better record to listen to as opposed to an honest document of their set. Bury Your Dead’s Alive hid nothing and sounded sloppy, but, much like the band itself, was still a lot of fun. Pantera’s Live:101 Proof is perhaps the gold standard of live metal albums in a post Live After Death era, with the band playing loose and exciting versions of their album tracks – with some curveballs thrown in – to an ocean of cheering, all still grittily produced. There are plenty more than I’m forgetting, but plenty I’m leaving out. How does a style of music so often associated with maximum precision manage to translate itself without making its audience feel that the experience wouldn’t be that different if they sat at home with a few beers and listened to the polished studio product? It’s hard to answer, but it does mean that most live metal albums are strictly for fans only. That being said, if I were an I Killed the Prom Queen fan, I’d be pretty pissed off that Sleepless Nights and City Lights was the band’s swan song.

(1 out of 5 horns)

-SO