Review by Felix on April 30, 2020.

It is surprising to see that a lot of people seem to love the debut of Vendetta. The average rate of reviews speaks volumes. But believe me, nobody took care of Vendetta at the time of the release of their debut. The German metal magazines like Rock Hard, Metal Hammer or Rock Power never wrote many lines about the band from Bavaria. Celtic Frost, Running Wild, Kreator or Helloween were pure gold for Noise Records, but Vendetta did not find a great audience. Please keep in mind that there were also a lot of competitors that had contracts with other companies and many of them (Destruction, Sodom, Iron Angel) also knew how to thrash in a competent manner. Vendetta did not lack technical skills, but 30 years ago, it was common understanding that their songwriting was rather mediocre. To be honest, I still think so. Go and Live...Stay and Die is, to describe it positively, a decent record, but it has nothing that makes my heart beat faster.

Vendetta chose a pretty complex kind of thrash and this approach resulted in overlong pieces. They lacked catchiness and a clear focus was missing as well. The title track, for instance, celebrates an orgy of (sometimes bulky) riffs, but at the end of the day, this guitar wizardry remains futile. There are no parts that leave a lasting impression. The following 'Traitor's Fate' offers a dynamic bridge, so far, so good, but compared with really strong, more or less technical thrash albums from Germany, this tune also gets lost in the crowd. Each and every song of Angel Dust's debut beats the here presented tracks with great ease, not least because of the fact that Vendetta always miss the right moment to bring a song to an end. Especially 'Traitor's Fate' shows this symptom. This lack of compactness is simply regrettable, because it drains the power from the songs.

The vocals sound lackluster and interchangeable. It's obvious that the guy at the microphone lacks charisma. His ordinary voice matches the ordinary lyrics. Very socio-critical, very instructive for uninformed fools like me and always on the morally right side. The album's title was a statement against xenophobia in a country where no right-wing party played any role. Slightly strange, but it's always a good thing to bring yourself into position against a non-existent enemy. Anyway, the lyrics are not the problem here. The musical mix of high speed, average riffs, meandering, sometimes excessive solos and rather poor melodies is just too weak to compete with Paradox or further similarly acting formations. Last but not least, the unobtrusive production also has nothing that gives the album an own identity. Thus, it was no wonder that Vendetta never got a big piece of the cake. Go and Live... is gathering dust on my shelf.

Rating: 5.5 out of 10

Review by Carl on April 18, 2022.

A good while ago, a friend of mine was telling me that the first time he started to feel old was the time he was at a concert and suddenly realized that the people on stage were younger than him. Well, I am currently reviewing a release by a band formed by people who could theoretically be my children, and is it my imagination or is my back starting to hurt? Also, has the text on my laptop always been this small? Damn kids better stay of my lawn, too.

So, they are young, in their late teens to be precise, but there's nothing childish about their first full length, because this is a pretty banging death metal release. You won't hear anything new here, but the way these rugrats combine different styles of death does sound pretty refreshing. Imagine them located right on the crossroads where old school death metal meets brutal death metal, kinda like Bolt Thrower and Obituary colliding with Mortician and Splattered Cadaver, with some touches of goregrind thrown in. The band alternates between grinding ferocity, more old school stomping rhythms, some slamming brutality and slow crawling creepiness, and this to great effect as well. Here and there they insert some groovy goregrind parts (think of acts like Rompeprop or Spasm and their brethren here) that I had some trouble with at first listen. I'm personally not that big on this particular style, so these umpa-umpa-umpa parts kinda irked me at first. After a while though, that feeling ceased somewhat, because these parts actually add even more variation to what is already a pretty varied offering of bludgeoning death metal mayhem. The music is tightly held together by some truly gruff grunting (occasionally interspersed by some hellish shrieks), great musicianship and a production as heavy as Dom DeLuise piggybacking on Pavarotti's shoulders. And yes, I chose this comparison so only us old guys would understand.

As stated earlier, there's nothing anything remotely new on this album, but that's no point of criticism worth mentioning in my book. This is a powerful dose of death metal, that is not only worth it's salt because of the excellent execution of the music and the truly bludgeoning heaviness it exudes, but also because it sounds like I'm meeting up with a lot of bands I haven't thought of in a long time. Look, it's Lord Gore! Man, it's been ages since I've heard Disastrous Murmur. Hey, is that Fleshgrind I hear there? That kinda thing, and boy, is this a blast!

It's certainly good to hear that not all young death metal bands seem to be chained to the templates set out by bands like Dissection, Incantation or Devourment, but that some just take what they like and throw it all together to see what comes out the other end, and I do applaud that. I'd even dare to state that perhaps we need more bands like Wretched Inferno.

Well done, you snot-nosed pups! This cranky old bastard salutes you.

Rating: 8 out of 10