Review: Roger Waters – This Is Not A Drill – Live From Prague
Roger Waters – This Is Not A Drill – Live From Prague
Format: CD – Vinyl LP – DVD – Blu-ray – Digital / Label: Sony
Release: 2025
Text: Martien Koolen
I have been a Floyd fan as long as I can remember and that is mainly because I love Gilmour’s glorious guitar playing, Gilmour’s emotional vocals and Waters’ brilliant song writing and “interesting” lyrics. Gilmour’s solo albums are also second to none, while Waters’ solo albums are mainly dark, obscure, and rather depressive.
‘This Is Not A Drill’ is a live album, recorded in Prague and it shows all the dark sides of mister Waters indeed. When you listen to the introduction you are told by Waters to “Fuck Off To The Bar” if you do not like his politics; a fair but rather unfriendly warning indeed to start a concert with.
The first song of the exceedingly long, maybe too long, setlist is one of the most iconic Floyd tracks ever, being of course Comfortably Numb and I could NOT believe my ears when I heard this version of a true milestone Pink Floyd song. Waters turned this amazing song into the most utterly lame version of Comfortably Numb in all of recorded history for sure; as there is no brilliant guitar solo whatsoever, so skip this one if you can, please!!
Honestly, I have to say that the rest of the album is of course musically competent but not really brilliant or exuberating. Take for instance the rather flat sounding Run Like Hell or the toothless version of another Pink Floyd classic Wish You Were Here. However you can enjoy some nice versions of songs like Any Colour You Like, Us And Them, Shine On You Crazy Diamond and Sheep – a song from Floyd’s best album ‘Animals’ – at least if you do not mind the childish bleating attempts of Waters in the beginning of that song.
Unfortunately Waters’ vocals are not (of course not, as this man is eighty-two years old) what they used to be – which is an understatement – and these sometimes truly awful vocals ruin a couple of songs (The Powers That Be or Run Like Hell) for sure!
Overall, I would say forget this live album, but the concert video, with the same songs of course, is worth seeing for sure as the visuals are more than stunning indeed.
Tracks:
CD 1
01. Introduction
02. Comfortably Numb
03. The Happiest Days of Our Lives
04. Another Brick in the Wall, Pt. 2
05. Another Brick in the Wall, Pt. 3
06. The Powers That Be
07. The Bravery Of Being Out of Range
08. The Bar Part 1
09. Have a Cigar
10. Wish You Were Here
11. Shine On You Crazy Diamond
12. Sheep
CD 2
01. In The Flesh
02. Run Like Hell
03. Déjà Vu
04. Is This the Life We Really Want?
05. Money
06. Us and Them
07. Any Colour You Like
08. Brain Damage
09. Eclipse
10. Two Suns in the Sunset
11. The Bar Part 2
12. Outside the Wall
Website: https://rogerwaters.com/