Machine-‘fuckin’-Head. Who does not know that band? They shocked the world with their first release "Burn My Eyes", and continued to be at the front of metal until their "Supercharger" record. Bad things happened during that period, and it took the band two years to get everything back together again. This resulted in the critically acclaimed "Through The Ashes Of Empires", which was hailed by various magazines as "Metalrecord of the Year" and so on. Most critics called it a "Return to Form" and this DVD is a document about the band’s return to that form. It features a full live concert (filmed during the TTAE tour at London’s Brixton Academy, with over 5000 people in attendance), and various types of bonus footage.

To start with, the quality of the concert footage is just awesome. I cannot imagine that it gets any better than this. Enough cameras, good lighting, and the editing is good. Editor Mike Sloat (who also did the band’s ‘Imperium’ and ‘Days Turn Blue To Gray’ videos) has made sure that everything looks nice and sleak. Also things like splitscreen and some cool framing tricks are used, which really add to the overall presentation. The sound quality is great as well. It's crystal clear, and I can’t say anything bad about the soundmix. Sometimes the sound is almost cd-perfect; which says something about the band’s playing and the effort that was made to record it. The crowd in the Brixton Academy is hearable as well, and it really helps to bring the live-experience to the viewer.

The concert has two pieces of footage added to it; one piece about life on the road and a piece about Machine Head fans. The Life on the road part shows some of the stuff that the band goes through while on tour, and is compiled of mostly funny moments. The fans piece is an homage to the ‘real’ MH fans, or as the band says, "those crazy ass motherfuckers out there". Definitely some entertaining stuff! On the DVD you can also watch three videoclips (for ‘Imperium’, ‘Days Turn Blue To Gray’ and ‘The Blood, The Sweat, The Tears’ ) and their respective making-offs.

The most impressive piece of bonus footage is definitely "The Making of Through The Ashes of Empires", which is a documentary about the things that the band has went through after the release of ‘Supercharer’. You might know that the band has been labelless for 2 years and had a memberchange, and this footage shows a lot about the things the guys had to go through.

The only thing that I’m missing from this DVD is well….more stuff! I believe that Rob Flynn said that they had over 300+ hours of footage to work with, but I think that the "Live on the Road" and "Fans" add up to an hour or so. The "Making of Through the Ashes" might be another 30 minutes, but the total "extra footage" might be a maximum of 2 hours. Kind of weird if you had 300+ hours to choose from! I would have also loved to see some stuff from other concerts, like the band’s headlining slot at Wacken Open Air, or some stuff from Rock am Ring.

But to be fair; this DVD is about Machine Head as where they are now, instead of an elaborate documentary about the band's history since its beginning. Maybe we’ll get treated to some huge 2-dvd set in the future which basically has everything the band has ever done, but until that day "Elegies" will do just fine.