Various Artists – DVD Volume 4

Drive-Thru Records is one of my favorite record labels, while they’ve recently had some ups and downs, just one look down their roster and any pop-punk fan will say that at least one band on there influenced them in some way or another. So yeah, they’re just a great pop-punk record label. This is the label’s fourth effort with DVDs. I have yet to see volume one, I loved volume two, and volume three was pretty forgettable, which meant I really had no idea what to expect from volume four but I was still excited for it. Unfortunately, instead of volume four staying on par with volume two, volume four fell alongside the third installment.

Like Volume Three, this DVD isn’t horrible, but Drive-Thru Records could’ve done so much better than they did. First off, there’s only eight videos on here, which falls short compared to the thirteen in its predecessor. Furthermore, only really half of the videos are worth multiple watches. The Early November, Hellogoodbye, and Dave Melillo all supply some good videos (TEN‘s Hair is surprisingly entertaining and the song convinced me to give them yet another chance and maybe check out The Mother, Mechanic And The Path); but tat the same time there are some incredibly boring videos. Socratic‘s I Am The Doctor is one of the weirdest videos I’ve seen in a while and seems like it was just thrown together.

But like always, the music videos aren’t the main reason most people will buy this DVD, they’ll want it for the interviews and behind the scenes footages; and this time Drive-Thru Records did better than they did on Vol. three. While the two live clips are passable, the making of the videos are quite interesting. It’s nice to see the Halifax guys messing around, acting the “rock star” role and poking fun at MTV Cribs, and Hellogoodbye are the regular old goofs like they always are. As far as “making the video” goes, The Early November gives the best insight into the creative process of the video. Although none are as good as the behind the scenes look at the Senses Fail video shoot that they had in Vol. two.

After the making the videos they go on a little Warped Tour montage and interview clips with The Early November, Halifax and I Am The Avalanche before doing a fear factory competition with Houston Calls, Self Against City and House Of Fools which is fairly entertaining. A nice little highlight was the second edition of Scareric where random label employees go and continually scare a high strung employee.

This DVD isn’t horrible, but it isn’t great. The behind the scenes footage is better than volume three, but the videos aren’t as good. Still, it doesn’t live up to volume two in any way. Big Drive-Thru Records fans will probably enjoy it, but casual fans will only watch it once and then put away into storage.