Reviews: U2 – The Unforgettable Fire – Vinyl

By Brett Gideon

Twenty-five years have passed since this album was released. Really? Contemplating the passing of two and a half decades is enough to drive me to drink, but the way this album is mastered will surely steer me to the very bottom of the bottle because it sounds somewhat compressed in the ‘everything louder than everything else’ recorded for radio idiom.

This isn’t overwhelming and seems worse on certain songs than others (the title track in particular exists in a limited dynamic range) but it is fatiguing and made me want to turn it down, which is a damn shame because I really rate this album. I just about wore out my cassette version back in the ’80s and while it’s not loaded with U2′s biggest stadium rocking hits (‘Pride’ apart), it remains fresh, strong and subtler than most of the group’s releases. This is where U2 became the U2 that the world knows and the album is worth owning but I wouldn’t bin my old copy (if I had one) to buy the remaster.