Kingcrimsonprog Hellalive was the first live album from Machine Head, recorded primarily in 2001 at the Brixton Academy in London and released in 2003.

The band play a mixture of material from all of their studio albums up until that point, to an excited crowd. The band seem genuinely pleased to be on stage and playing which gives the concert a great feel. Their performance is absolutely electric and even songs from their critically reviled Supercharger album sound amazing on this live album, as the band play them so hard and passionately.

Hellalive works almost as a greatest hits package, delivering every song that ever had a music video up until that point in the track listing. All the old favourites like ‘Ten Ton Hammer,’ and the classic ‘Davidian,’ are present and correct and performed extremely well.

Two of the tracks feature future guitarist Phil Demmel and were taken from a different date, one year after the main concert, which makes up for the cover songs which the band did not include on the cd from the original concert.

Overall, Hellalive is a pretty essential Machine Head release. The performance is great, the track listing is comprehensive (this would be a perfect album to buy as a first album by the band as it gives you a flavor of all their first four albums) and the sound is pretty good as well. Obviously, this isn’t going to be as good as the Elegies DVD because there are no visuals, but as a Machine Head live cd I have absolutely no complaints.