Over the course of Absurd’s 35-year history, we have performed live in many parts of the world. Recordings exist of some of these shows, often made by fans in the audience using fairly basic equipment. Due to concerns about their quality, we have so far chosen not to release such recordings. The sole exception was the now sold-out “Live & Raw in the North” EP.
Unfortunately, two so-called live albums have now been released that fall short of our standards. We would not want to subject our fans to recordings of this quality, let alone expect them to pay for them.
The graphic designer behind “Live in Suomi Finland Perkele 2008” has demonstrated that he cannot tell animals or towns apart. Instead of the intended wolf, a beaver ended up on the cover: the one featured on the coat of arms of the Finnish municipality of Eno in North Karelia. We have never performed there. Our two Finnish shows in 2008 took place in Tampere and Turku.
The recently released “Conquering Vinland” comes from the same dubious source. On this latest so-called live album, the track listing has been completely mangled and contains several embarrassing spelling mistakes to boot.
Given these repeated blunders, we are beginning to suspect that these releases are a deliberate attempt to make a mockery of our band. We therefore advise our fans to save their money rather than spend it on such substandard releases.
We are still working on our first proper live album, “Das wilde Heer”, which will feature professionally recorded audio and video from our 2018 performance in Kyiv. Recordings of other, earlier concerts will be made available to our fans free of charge in due course.