Vendetta – Tyranny of Minority

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Lion Music
Produced by Edward Box

Vendetta were formed just last year by guitarist Edward Box who, after two solo instrumental albums, wanted to form a regular band and make music more akin to his true love – traditional metal.

Box recruited bassist Gary Foalle and guitarist Pete Thompson, and asked drummer Mick Robson, who played on his solo albums, to fill-in on drums for the purposes of recording the album. Chris Higgins has since been brought in as the permanent drummer. Box elected to handle all vocals himself, but it’s really the guitars that are the big attractor for this album.

Any album which individually lists the player of each guitar solo (of which there are typically two or three per song) promises to be a guitar extravaganza, and opening intro Archangel reaffirms that promise with a suitably grand harmonised solo from Box and Thompson.

Unfortunately, the album doesn’t really deliver. Box’s vocals are not the best (he spent 18 months training, during which time he could surely have hired a singer?) and the record isn’t very heavy, although there aren’t any real ballads either. On top of that the constant stream of solos are not very impressive. Touted as a virtuoso, Box and Thomson trade solos throughout the record, usually pitching a warm Richie Sambora kind of lead tone against a sharper Dave Mustaine style, but none of them are the kind of jaw-dropping things you expect from other current melodic metal virtuosos like Gus G., Jorn Viggo Lofstad or Magnus Karlsson.

Making a record follow traditional roots is a risky business, and Box hasn’t entirely avoided the “dated” trap. The result is certainly very guitar-oriented, but the songs around them aren’t particularly interesting, all following a similar early-Saxon-riffing (Lost Cause is pure Saxon) pattern and repeating lyrics far too often in each song. The lyrics themselves are pretty good, and the themes tackled by the songs are mostly more thoughtful than your average melodic hard rock stuff, but they’re given no impact by the light guitar tone and thin production.

Which traditional metal bands Box had in mind when we was working on the style for Vendetta remains a mystery, but the resultant style is much closer to the melodic hard rock of Ten than it is to the classic metal of Judas Priest.

“ very guitar-oriented ”

Tracklist: Archangel / Generation Kill / I Executioner / Doorways of The Mind / Golden Boy / Red Skies / Plastic God / Bones To Dust / Lost Cause / All Fall Down / No Safe Hole / Window of The Soul

Written by Andy Lye
More: Albums, Heavy Metal, Vendetta