Victory Style 5

"Compilation"
(Victory Records)  

-  The first tune resonates with a dead ringer riff from Lizzy Borden's "Warfare" classic-for all it matters, but hey, I'm trying to avoid writing their name as long as I can. Okay they're called Atreyu, they're the first of 23 contributing groups who've at one time or another seen and been heard on Chicago's home for Extreme Rock and Roll… "A Song For The Optimist," is the tune and it's got groove, it's got style and damn it's just about worth buying the whole damned thing for! Forever the optimist I'm expecting at least another eighteen or twenty great cuts from mostly artists I've never heard of… I get about eleven, so we're talking a fifty/fifty split of scene-stealers and wind breakers-not bad I suppose. Victory's pride and power was firmly entrenched years ago in a hotbed of Hard-Core music and anyone who's familiar with Blood For Blood or No Innocent Victim or back when Stretch Armstrong were angry, knows there's a lot of integrity and muscle that goes into the music. But we as the intuitive animals that we are, tire easily of the familiar and we expect to move forward, progress, not digress necessarily, and so enter the Taking Back Sunday types, the Thursday's, Catch 22's, Student Rick… all adding an element or three to the mix adding a friendly dose of minor-key Pop charms to the ferocity… along the way a couple of interesting covers rise up and bite you in your unsuspecting ass like Grade's "Ziggy Stardust" from Bowie or Student Rick doing Journey's "Any Way You Want It" that actually both come out okay once the shock wears off. There's a definite concentration toward singing prevalent here that adds the new dynamic to the music and keeps track five from sounding like a dupe of thirteen or however the numbers happen to fall. And there's plenty of mind-blowing mosh-pit mayhem going on while you're going gaga over the melodiousness of a chorus or, "my how does he reach those highs," you get trampled by Strife's "Mon Bel Ami," or Darkest Hour's "An Epitaph," which is amongst the elite here-you'll wanna check them out, got that Shadows Fall/All That Remains richness to power that's fast becoming an American Metal institution. All reps get their tracks in writing so you get to see exactly what they're saying, a necessary evil in some cases… only in Blood For Blood's case, you probably don't want to know! So here ya go, think ya know the label by now? Maybe not, I'm pumped to hear some of these guys on their own-hey that's the idea ain't it? The VS5 thing makes it real easy-something old, something new, something previously unreleased, and an old Electric Frankenstein tune… It's the shit man!

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