My first instinct when watching Mutemath’s Armistice Live DVD was that it made the show look more exciting than it really was. Quick cuts, dramatic camera angles and a host of lighting effects really energize the show, which was energetic and inventive to start with. But that’s only relevant if you think of the DVD as a document of a show. If the DVD is thought of as its own entity, then the camerawork and editing is just as naturally a part of its creation as production and editing are when making an album. In fact, Armistice Live is exactly the DVD you’d expect from the production and technology-conscious Mutemath.

As the title suggests, the set leans very heavily on material from last year’s Armistice album, and the stage set includes an arch that imitates the entrance to Armstrong Park, which was featured on the album’s cover. Musically, there are some changes to songs, but not enough to make it musically necessary. Visually, it’s dynamic, but its visual vocabulary comes entirely from music videos, and that glossy, dramatic style would be convincing if human moments weren’t already the best parts of the DVD. No camera angles tart up singer Paul Meany offering a guitar-shaped synthesizer to those in the front row to tap and work, then handing it to them when he had to do something else. When he returned for the toy moments later, they handed it back, and that trusting relationship with an audience—in Atlanta, in this case—is more interesting than all the beautiful, quizzical, athletic, dramatic shots.