Cleopatra Entertainment: LA Guns - Live from the Guild Theatre (2025) - Reviewed

Images courtesy of Cleopatra Entertainment

Back in July 10^th of 2025 at the Guild Theatre in Menlo Park, California, L.A. Guns the American hard rock band formed in 1983 comprised of guitarist Tracii Guns, vocalist Phil Lewis, guitarist Ace Von Johnson, Johnny Martin on bass and Shawn Duncan on drums did a live show consisting of a seventeen-track setlist before a dedicated live audience.

Running a little over an hour and nineteen minutes, the show was originally released as an album from Cleopatra Records offered in compact disc form, vinyl and cassette tape.  One of the compact disc releases offered a DVD of the concert in the sleeve.  Now a year later, Cleopatra has gone back and given the concert a standalone Blu-ray 1080p resolution bump with 2.0 stereo sound.  The disc itself doesn’t have anything to speak of in the way of extras but fans of the concert film experience and the band L.A. Guns are sure to have a good time with it.

 
Initially designed to promote their then-new album Leopard Skin, despite years of time and tide that clearly aged the performers the show is explosive and consistently energetic.  Between playing Guns N’ Roses hits as well as their own classics such as The Ballad of Jayne and One More Reason, the band offers up an extensive lineup of tracks both new and old before the enthusiastic crowd.  

In one cute aside late into the show, someone in the crowd dons a The Mandalorian Yoda puppet and Phil Lewis as well as the camera crew can’t help but delightfully call attention to it.  Camerawork and sound recording of the concert is good and natural in 2.0 stereo and crisp digital video.  Much of the show is filmed from an exterior wide shot overlooking the stage with some medium close-ups of the performers and it intercuts throughout the stage depending on the song.
 
Strictly for fans of the band as well as the hard rock concert film with proof positive the guys behind L.A. Guns haven’t lost their edge to time, the Live from the Guild Theatre concert video is a good release on Blu-ray disc for those who missed out on the collector’s CD edition released via Cleopatra Records.  For those who already own it, its a marginal bump you may or may not need to replace the DVD of.  For the uninitiated like myself, it was a cool concert experience and the disc release is nice but those expecting extra performances or content are in for a bit of a disappointment.  

Like some of Cleopatra and MVD’s other preexisting DVD titles bumped up to Blu-ray disc, there’s not a whole lot of additional effort to include more bonus features so you’d really only be repurchasing it for the qualitative upgrade rather than quantity.  I enjoyed it and die-hard fans will likely buy up whatever comes out anyway but still a bare bones release.

--Andrew Kotwicki