Hapfairy's World

Symphonic metal news with a sprinkle of fairy dust

Unboxing: Vehicle of Spirit Deluxe Mailorder Edition


After my bad luck with the The Holographic Principle earbook getting lost last year, I was relieved when the new Nightwish DVD Vehicle of Spirit managed to make it to my house - even if it did take some time, due to ordering directly from Nightwish's webshop in Finland. Since this is the first time a concert I've attended has made it onto a DVD, I decided to mark the occasion by ordering the exclusive mailorder box set. This one is pretty big, so it arrived in large cardboard box, nicely packaged with plenty of padding.

It was a really great surprise to see that they'd also thrown in a AAA pass from the band's US tour. I heard that some people got free t-shirts, though, so I felt a bit less lucky after that!



The box itself is nice and sturdy, and continues the retro cinema theme throughout. The back features the full tracklisting for all the discs, plus a list of the box's contents. It's nicely presented and easy to read (you'd think this would be a given, but I've seen albums with completely unreadable text in the past).



Inside, you're greeted with a small square poster of the band, posing at the end of the Wembley show with Richard Dawkins. Beneath that are the three vinyls - as a nice touch, they're coloured black, white and red respectively, in-keeping with the colour scheme.



Underneath, you can find a folded poster featuring photos of the shows - looks good, fine for sticking to a wall but a little impractically sized if you want to use a frame or poster hangers. Then you get to the main event: the Earbook, which sits neatly in the bottom of the box. If you've already bought a Nuclear Blast Earbook or seen one of my other unboxing blogs, you probably have a good idea of what to expect. These are basically like large, hardback books with slots to contain CDs. Currently the Earbook is the only place you can get a physical CD of the live release.




Inside, the Earbook holds all the discs (blu-ray, DVD, live CDs) on the inside front and back covers. Usually they would contain lyrics, but since this is a live release, the book pages are filled with pictures from throughout the tour. As a nice touch, they also included the great reviews the Wembley show received in UK magazines.

So the big question is, is it worth it? I would say if you're a big Nightwish collector who wants a great lasting memento of the Wembley show (or the Tampere show to a lesser extent) then it is. Otherwise, though if your budget allows, I'd recommend getting the Earbook on its own, as this contains everything you need to enjoy the experience.

0 comments:

Post a Comment