cross my heart - i'm a throwdown fan. i always loved 'haymaker', i began to really love 'vendetta' that i had on cd in 2006 but never really appreciated back then and i discovered their first two albums ('beyond repair' and 'you don't have to be blood to be family') which i love the shit out of them. plus two 7"es, one of which i posted already - 'drive me dead' - and another that i could already obtain and that will land on this blog in due time. so the only release that i don't have and which exists on vinyl was 'venom & tears'. i was a little undecided wether to order it or not. i heard some songs of it and knew that throwdown was going a new direction. more pantera-metal kind of. i wasn't sure if i liked it and so i held on for some time. but then finally the scale turned in favour of 'venom & tears'.
i think i can safely say that i really like this record. of course it's not another 'haymaker' but i like it for what it is. if i wasn't a throwdown fan i probably wouldn't spin this as much as i do. but in the context of their whole discography this album makes sense. don't get me wrong, it's a good one. the breakdowns are as heavy as only throwdown can deliver, cool hooks and straight edge, it's all there. but it's a new direction. like always when bands take a new course the older fans usually like the older stuff more because it was the very thing they became fans in the first place. as i said before it's still a pretty good listen though. i didn't listen to 'deathless' yet, which is their latest album from 2009. it never got released on vinyl and that's why i wasn't interested. but now i'm curious. heard that throwdown are writing new stuff. interesting, interesting...
'venom & tears' was pressed on two different colours. there is a dark red version and my marbled blue. dark red is limited to 660 copies. the blue one is limited to 433 copies plus 4 test press copies. i got the numbers from dead format but they seem odd though. all together that makes 1097 copies. strange number. anyway, if the information is correct i have, again, not the less limited colour way. in this case it's even the rarest. that was a good order from per koro ;-)
trustkill records. 2008.