"One of the few decent cinematic documents of the early '80s hardcore punk scene (and a major educational item on such matters, given its frequent appearance on the much-missed cable series Night Flight), Another State of Mind has been given an enhanced presentation for its release on DVD. Another State of Mind has been transferred to disc in its original full-frame aspect ratio of 1.33:1, and thankfully has been mastered from the original video elements; the disc looks cleaner and sharper than it did in the film's previous home-video incarnations, though it is missing the semi-helpful burned-in subtitles that appeared during some of the songs. The audio has been mastered in Dolby Digital Stereo and sounds fine, though there's no getting past the movie's sometimes dodgy location recording; the interviews are performances are in English, with optional subtitles in English and Japanese. Finally, the disc includes three, count 'em,
three
audio commentaries -- one from Social Distortion leader Mike Ness, another from Shawn Stern and his brothers Mark and Adam from Youth Brigade, and finally directors Adam Small and Peter Stuart. One senses that all these years later there's little love lost between Ness and the Stern Brothers, and these two commentaries each feature a few jabs at the tour's other participants, while both agree that the film's editing fractured the tour's timeline and they both wonder aloud about why certain characters and events made the cut. Small and Stuart, meanwhile, justify their editorial choices and discuss the tour in a manner that suggests they didn't know a tremendous amount about punk rock going into the project and still don't. At any rate, the three commentaries each offer an interesting 20-years-on perspective on both the film and the tour it documented, and anyone who cares about the music and the period captured in Another State of Mind will want to give them a listen as well as give the disc a close look."