Fields of the Nephilim are on the eve of a supposed reunion, and to gear up for it, Beggars Banquet re-released their catalog of Nephilim discs for the next wave of fans. Earth Inferno is the fourth and final reissue, encompassing live recordings of three shows from the Nephilim's 1990 tour.

Regretably, live discs never give you the same rush you get from actually watching a band in action, and on Earth Inferno, it's especially disappointing. You can't enjoy all the lights, effects and fog that probably went along with these concerts; judging from these guys' over- the- top nature, there were undoubtedly some pretty interesting things happening onstage. Something about the way the music is played seems to be saying, "Ha ha! We're toying with the lights and not letting you see it!" However, if you're able to get past the insinuation that you're a worthless piece of goth-folk if you've never seen the band in concert, the disc comes across as a really great show.

Unencumbered by the sways of emotion that prohibit this band's studio releases from being good roadtrip music, Earth Inferno is in a constant state of movement. Indeed, the beginning of the disc takes off quickly after a short welcome with the song "Intro (Dead But Dreaming)"; the band leads off with "For Her Light," "At the Gates of Silent Memory," and "(Paradise Regained)." The tracks blend pleasantly into each other with very little time to consider the transition, and it seems the show had such an effect on the audience, that very little ambient noise is heard until the end of the first track, four songs into their set. We may never know whether this is attributable to some nerdy sound engineer deciding that people are just too noisy or that the audience was in such awe that they could only watch stunned, though I'd suspect the latter. At any rate, it makes for a clear, clean recording, stripped of drunken hecklers.

The disc continues with a number of Nephilim favorites from their three Beggars Banquet releases, finally climaxing with a nine- minute version of "Psychonaut," a track previously only available on a single. Afterwards, presumably culled from one of their encores, the disc nicely tops itself off with a haunting rendition of "Dawnrazor," arguably the band's best- known song.

Earth Inferno gives us a taste of what not enough of us have experienced-- a darksider concert at a time when such things were still in vogue, a glimpse into a performance that will have us regretting indefinitely that we didn't know who the Nephilim was the first time around. Perhaps the reunion will give us another chance.

-Skaht Hansen