Review by UnhinderedbyTalent for Throwdown - Vendetta (2005)

Moving along with my groove metal clan challenge (just for shits ‘n giggles because most groove metal induces either or with me) and I am trying to get through all the releases that cross into core territory first. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, although I have gotten a little more comfortable with metalcore and deathcore in recent years, they remain my least favoured sub-genres and therefore it would be all too easy to park them at the end of my challenge and give them little attention until I absolutely must. Secondly, such releases are integral to the early noughties’ development of groove metal that it they are impossible to ignore.

My first foray into A Life Once Lost’s 2005 release, Hunter was a successful experience. Byzantines’ offering in the challenge list faired a little less favourably and so it was with some degree of hope that Throwdown’s album from the same year as the above two releases would restore the balance in a more positive direction again.

It didn’t.

The main problem I have with Vendetta is that it is utterly one-dimensional. This is the exact same territory that Hatebreed ruled over for the previous eight years already. Vocals falling over the top themselves alongside racing guitars and d-beat percussion. Rinse, and repeat. Where the groove elements do get space to breathe, they are short lived, and we soon found ourselves in the near robotic and mechanical riffing that sullies most of the tracks on the album. Plus, you must get five tracks into the album to hear pretty much any groove influence at all. Your patience is hardly rewarded.

For an album clearly so full of anger and vitriol the is just a lack of energy to many of the tracks on here, largely because it is the same track structure repeatedly exhausted time after time. This album is apparently considered by some to be a “classic” in terms of The New Wave of American Heavy Metal that was a surging movement at the time. It has not aged all that well clearly, but I doubt I would had been much more enamoured with Vendetta had I been around in that scene some twenty years ago.