Here’s a new spin on the reissue craze. Instead of merely augment said disc with (often lame) bonuses, have the band play the entire record live! How many times has a favorite band come to town, only to perform the same set, year in and year out, never airing the lesser cuts or ones you find particularly special? Well, as a result of a multi-night stint in Bochum, Germany right around Christmas ’08, metal’s Viking warriors played the back catalog on successive evenings! Whether the others will get similar treatment from Metal Blade, or we’ll have to wait for a box set plus DVDs is unknown, but here’s what the current incarnation has to offer.

On two CDs, there’s a remaster of the original version, with ‘Siegreicher Marsch’ (Victory March) sung in German. Onstage renditions of those eight studio cuts form disc #2. Instead of just music, the producers wisely left Johan Hegg’s between song banter intact, so the whole thing flows like a real gig. It marked the first public performance of ‘Abandoned’.

Nice way for the latecomers to the pagan altar to not only catch up, but get some thing extra in the deal.