LIVE & UNRELEASED

HOST are a band that i'm a huge fan of, and the two studio albums they put out back in 1974 & 1976 are incredible. The vocals on those two records are in Norwegian and the sound is quite heavy and guitar led. This particular release is a live album looking back at three periods of the bands career.

The first six track are from a live concert in Karlstad, Sweden back in 1975. This concert was also broadcast on radio in Sweden.The singer talks in Norwegian between each track. The instrumental "Ase" is my favourite from this section. I like the songs they chose for this concert but the sound quality isn't as good as what we get with the rest of the album.

The next three tracks were from a re-union concert from 1991. Good sound on this one and that makes all the difference in the world.The bass and guitar really stand out on these three tracks.This is a glimpse at how powerful this band was."Fattig Men Fri" is my favourite from this section. Just the raw guitar and heavy sound as the drums pound away is so gratifying to me. Haha. I like when it settles too. Scalding guitar after 3 minutes. Huge bass later.

The last four tracks are previously unreleased and come from a period when the band had changed their name to ICE and started to sing in English. Only the vocalist and bass player remained. They were looking for some wide-world success but they broke up before even recording an album. There four tracks were recorded in 1978 from a Norwegian TV show. Not really a fan of these songs.

So 3 stars is all I can give, non-essential. Stick to their two outstanding studio releases.