Bride: Live At Cornerstone Fest 2001 | Always The Same Ones
(2025 – Retroactive Records)
I will never stop praising a band like Bride. It’s not that I flaunt my undisguised fondness for them, but the truth is that even when I try to be as objective as possible, it’s impossible for them to go unnoticed. Bride has always been one of the most prominent bands in Christian Metal, and perhaps that is the detail that has prevented the band from becoming much more recognized than it is.
Bride is an explosion of Hard Rock, with certain reminiscences of traditional Metal and the most stale rock, starting with the lethal combo formed by the Thompson brothers: Dale on vocals and Troy on guitars. A kind of twin act that, when combined, makes noise, and how! With more than 40 years on the scene, Bride is still active, releasing quality albums and undoubtedly in an enviable state.
This “Live At Cornerstone Fest 2001,” as you can imagine, is not new at all. In fact, it is material that comes from a live performance in 2001, which was originally released by the Millenium Eight Records label. That release, like others in the same series, went completely out of print, which is why Retroactive Records, as it often does, is reissuing this live album, with some differences but essentially maintaining what Bride sounded like live in those years.
The interesting thing about this live album is the list of songs chosen. With a good selection of songs from their early albums, Bride renews its ties to the first part of its long history, the one that links it more to metal than to hard rock. What is striking about this is that we are talking about the year 2001, a time when Bride decided to significantly shift their classic sound towards the more modern sounds of the time. “Fist Full Of Bees” and “This Is It” are proof of this, but even so, here Bride is dedicated to showing off their early work, and in our opinion, some of the best in their entire history.
With an invitation to Rock N’ Roll and Metal as an intro, the album kicks off with the unmistakable riff of the relentless “Same Ol’ Sinner,” perhaps the necessary link between Bride’s metal phase and their subsequent deepening into Hard Rock. “Fool Me Once” is the tremendous beginning of the classic “Silence Is Madness,” and here it is rendered with the same intensity.
As a kind of “sports in memory,” “Whiskey Seed” appears, from another classic album like “Live To Die,” but if you want more neolithic times, you will surely find it in a piece like “First Will Be Last,” from Bride’s first album.
There’s also time for “Thunder In The City” and “Until The End We Rock,” two other classic hits from Bride. The excellent and iconic “Hell No” is also present, but strangely we don’t find “Heroes,” a must at any concert of the band and belonging to the first stage of the band.
The classic Christian hymns “I Saw The Light/Power In The Blood” are a bonus, considering that these versions were never released on any other material or recorded by Bride, so for Bride fans, it’s the missing piece and bait for collectors. The finale comes courtesy of another classic, the tremendous “Under The Influence,” featuring Dale Thompson’s rapping and a little bit of RATM, which doesn’t hurt anyone (in case anyone didn’t notice).
Few bands have enough material to put together an entertaining setlist full of classics, even going through different stages of their career. The most important thing is that this live album captures the strength and power that Bride achieves when playing live, and even though this material is from 2001, believe me when I say that Bride still sounds tremendous today.
This reissue of “Live At Cornerstone” gains some things and loses others. We already mentioned the medley of traditional hymns included in this new edition, but compared to the original version of the album, it loses the bonus tracks, which actually came from “Bride Live Vol. 1,” including “Amazing Grace,” “Jesus On The Mainline,” and “I Have Decided,” as well as some speeches that are missing.
Obviously, as in the other cases in the same series, the cover is different, in this case showing a photograph of Troy Thompson and his carefully maintained guitar. Inside the sleeve, in addition to the lyrics, we find a central photograph, Bride’s biography, and a text written by Dale Thompson himself about this show at the 2001 Cornerstone Festival, in which he reflects, among other things, on the misunderstanding of some labels regarding Bride (something incomprehensible, really), which has turned the band into a totally independent project in recent years.
As with the other editions in this collection entitled “Live At Cornerstone Fest 2001” (Deliverance, Sacred Warrior), the sound has been completely remastered, giving us a major facelift compared to the original edition, while still maintaining the unique character of any live album.
In that sense, and in the case of Bride, you can enjoy the power that the band usually displays live, with a much more concise result than in other live material that has been released. I particularly like this material more than others that the same band has released at the time, in addition to the list of songs that we think is great, even though it would have been great to hear a few more songs. The feeling is that the album fell short. There was room for more songs.
A special feature of this reissue is that it has not only been released on compact disc, but for the first time it also has a vinyl version, which is no small detail, especially for lovers of the physical format like us.
Bride is still active today. We don’t know for how long, but here we have a good excuse not only to enjoy the band playing live, but also to discover a little of the old, and good, from the band’s early days, but in a performance from 2001. A double trip through the time tunnel, you might say.
For more information on this stuff, below are the links to contact the Bride’s social media accounts, so you can follow them and find out all the latest news…
https://www.instagram.com/bride.band
https://www.facebook.com/BridebandOn?locale=es_LA
