This is a great concert DVD. Before this, my favorite live concert DVD was U2 Go Home live at Slane CastleU2 Go Home – Live From Slane Castle (Limited Edition Packaging) but this DVD is right on par. KOL was relatively unknown except for college play until the recent mainstream radio play of “Sex on Fire” but in my opinion one of the best groups and hardest working for quite some time. The band is made up of three brothers, and their cousin, from Tennessee but it is not country or southern rock. If you’re looking for backstage commentary or behind the scenes buy something else. Nothing but good ole rock-n-roll on this DVD. They play a lot of the older music like California Waiting, Molly Chambers and On Call plus the new ones like Sex on Fire and Notion. It was hard to find anything to complain about but I did find one thing. Trani wasn’t included. I gave it 5 stars only because I couldn’t give it 4 and 9/10 because of the lack of Trani. Buy this DVD, turn out the lights, turn the volume up to 11 and wear this sucker out.
Rating: 5 / 5

The DVD of Kings of Leon Live at the O2 is stellar – maybe one of the best concert DVD’s I’ve seen anytime recently (and i watch a lot of this type of stuff on DVD). It captures a great concert from June of 2009, from the “Only By The Night” tour, and the performance for the UK crowd probably kicked it up a notch, as they were much bigger in the UK, years before they broke big in America (despite being from here). KOL gets better and better with each album, and I’m of the opinion that the latest album’s songs are the ones that come off the best here (though that might be because this album is my favorite), but there’s really not a bum track on the disc. Hilights (for me) here include “Molly’s Chambers”, “Closer”, “Crawl”, “Sex on Fire”, “Use Somebody” and “Knocked Up”. The cinematography is excellent – lots of really great angles, nice close-ups, and the editing is better than average in that they only go to fast-MTV cuts on the faster songs (one of my big criticisms of concert DVD’s is that there is usually motion-sickness inducing fast-edits, but that’s kept pretty much in restraint here). I watched it on a big screen (off my projector) and there was very nice definition/sharpness to the image (not sure if this is available on Blu-Ray but the regular DVD looks awesome – i could see faces in the crowd clearly, on the shots from the stage) and the 5.1 sound mix is nice and clear (KOL’s album engineers handled the mix on this too). Generous running time – an hour-forty, 22 songs, no other extras, but I didn’t care about that – the music/performance on this is SO GOOD, anything else would’ve just gotten in the way. Highest recommendation on this DVD – if you’re a KOL fan, this is a must-have.

Rating: 5 / 5