VENDED

VENDED     “Vended”

By Dr. Abner Mality

An extremist nu-metal band out of Des Moines, Iowa with make-up and special outfits...we’ve seen this movie before and know all about it. Well, surprise, surprise...VENDED singer Connor Taylor is the son of Corey and drummer Simon Crahan is son of "Clown". So SLIPKNOT is actually in these guys' blood. However... there’s a line in the press sheet that goes “No longer teenagers, the band looks unflinchingly at the world and themselves.” Oh brother…I knew rough seas were ahead when I read that one.

To be honest, VENDED is not as terrible as they could have been. There’s genuine heaviness and anger here and I actually think their songs are easier to digest than that other Iowa band. It’s just all so terribly generic, full of bro-metal bravado and all the cliches that come with it. Full of adolescent chest-beating and dropping the F-bomb as frequently as any teenage edgelord. There’s much gnashing of teeth and talking about “never giving in” and how harsh the world is. If the lyrics weren’t as well worn as the Blarney Stone, the utterly generic tough guy vocals would make them so. And yes, we do get the dreaded “sensitive” cleans mixed with the roars and snarls.

There are moments where this really slams, though, as familiar as it is.  “Paint The Skin” and “Am I The Only One?” have some real SLAYERish thrashing going on, but at some point, melodic vocals cut the balls off them. “Pitiful” and “Disparager” have some straight death metal brutality to them. There’s also some core breakdowns and nu-metal moments sprinkled throughout. VENDED is trying to hit on all the hard sounds and they have some success, but it’s just been done so many times. A real odd part of the album is the final three songs, all of which are very short...a ho-hum bit of mellowness, a short and brutal rager and an industrial metal sound collage. Kinda weird they were all grouped together instead of breaking up the other songs.

I'’m betting live is where VENDED do the most damage and I’d probably enjoy them in that environment. But as heavy as they are, this is a shallow band.

VENDED