Performed over the last few years and shown on the Channel 10 network, Live at The Chapel gave many of Australia's and the worlds greatest modern rock acts a chance to kick it live in front of an intimate audience - and in one of the most unique and elegant concert venues you'll ever see.

With the backdrop of a pristine Melbourne chapel, each of these international super-acts played their music live, raw and in the flesh. There's no dud voiceovers or miming to be seen on this disc and perhaps even the folk at MTV could take a few lessons from the guys at The Chapel on how a live performance should look, sound, and feel. As a television show, Live at The Chapel gave us a great variety of modern music, played on a live stage in a fun and friendly atmosphere. As a DVD, Live at The Chapel gives us 29 full rock tracks from 19 different artists, and is a warts and all portrayal of just what Australians expect out of live music.

Live at The Chapel is exactly what modern rock should be: elegant, intimate, stripped-down and loud. I’ve got my fingers crossed that the television series continues for years to come and we are blessed with further volumes of the live recordings on DVD. This is a must have for any Aussie rock fan!

Track listing:

The video detail is superb, with 27 of the 29 tracks all filmed in high definition widescreen and looking an absolute treat. The colours are rich, vibrant and deep. Shadow detail looks brilliant for a live concert (kudos to the lighting department) and compression artefacts are unheard of. All the clips are shown with an aspect ratio of 1.85:1 and are widescreen enhanced. The two remaining clips, from the show's first season are of very similar video quality to the 27 others, but are shown with an aspect ratio of 4:3 within the widescreen enhanced ratio of 1.85:1. Basically this just means you get thin black lines running right around the entire image. This might cause problems for those with small televisions but looked quite fine on my 80cm set. The back cover clearly warns about this problem and there was very little else that could have been done to prevent this while maintaining the brilliant widescreen enhancement. Considering the spectacular quality of the footage itself I would hardly be rushing to complain about this.

The audio is equally amazing. Although it is only a Stereo PCM affair (as opposed to a 5.1 or DTS soundtrack which many overseas concerts are afforded) the overall quality of the sound is superb. I was pleasantly surprised at the range of frequencies being bumped out of my speakers and the clarity of even the finest guitar solos. If nothing else this DVD should be proof enough that Australians can put together some kick arse concerts and transfer them to DVD like a big, wet, rock dream!

As far as extras go we are given some weblinks to the Sony music and Take 40 websites, as well as some 'intimate conversations' held by half a dozen of the bands during the filming of the individual shows. These are just brief snippets featuring the audience asking pretty simple questions like "what inspired you to write that song?" or "who was that song really about?". These are interesting distractions from the concerts themselves, but aren't really long enough to rank highly on my list. However with awesome animated menus and 29 great rock tracks to boast about this chock-o-block dual-layered disc really didn’t need too many extra features to improve its overall ranking.