MÖTLEY CRÜE

Just in case you missed this double-live horsepill when it was released as a Wal-Mart exclusive last year, here's your chance to revel in nearly two dozen party rock anthems from the luckiest bunch of dunderheads to stagger into fame and fortune. I'll give them this — it's easy to forget, until their hits are packaged (and re-packaged, and re-packaged again) in one pile, just how much impact the band had on the hard rock scene. Of course, since the band spent about four years being remotely cool and then spent the better part of two decades slowly and ingloriously crashing and burning, while attempting at every turn to wring a little more cash out of their legacy, it's not our fault for occasionally dismissing them, is it?

But if you wanna relive some past glories, stick to one of the best-ofs. The mix here is brutal, with overbearing drums punching through and the guitar and bass a muddy mess. Vince Neil is leaning on that old reliable Auto-tune software more than Cher with a head cold, and it doesn't take long for him to revert to his well-documented out-of-breath trick of skipping words, vamping through lines where he can't hold out the notes. And the set list stacks the hits early and often, before wallowing in a disc-two morass of lesser songs and a momentum-killing three-ballad medley. It's inexcusable after this long in the game to hit the crowd with "Sick Love Song"and"If I Die Tomorrow" and then only be able to get the energy going again with a tepid, clunky version of "Kickstart My Heart". Can't you at least try to live up to your legacy?

At the end of the day, a piece of product like "Carnival of Sins - Live" is what it is — a tour souvenir for those who watched the whole thing shamble to a halt live, perhaps while riding on their boyfriend's shoulders and peering through the gauze of their own hiked-up t-shirt. It's also another piece of an ever-sprawling puzzle for completists who insist the band's heyday never ended. Since not even the four original members of the band can keep it together any more, though, the rest of us can hardly be blamed for thinking of this overcooked pot of slop as a bit, well, disposable.