Vanadium - The Damage Done (1995)

Hahaha oh fuck yeah....

There is something so genuine about demo tapes and those early CDs, something that has been lost in this era of advanced digital recordings and high tech studio magic. They are just so unrefined and gritty sounding, just so real, y'know? Well, if you want real genuine honest-to-goodness, thrashed-out, faded-metallica shirt-wearin', beer-smelling, down and dirty balls'n'all METAL with a capital M, go no further than Vanadium's only full-length CD, 1995's "the Damage Done". Coming just a few years after their first release, the demo tape "Children of the Flame", this was a showpiece of working class pub metal in all its frenetic energy, torn denim and Adidas Romes.

Vanadium were a hard drinking young thrash band from the time when that sort of thing was still in its first incarnation and still relatively fresh. They played a shitload of gigs through the middle 90's, gaining a notorious reputation along the way. The only metal band to gain the front page of the West Australian Newspaper for throwing a Metal gig party that raged so out of control that the riot squad had to be called out to deal with it, Vanadium just loved it loud, drunk and crazy. If you can imagine a mix of Anthrax, Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer and the other big-haired black-clad grimy pioneers of NWOBHM, then you are pretty much hearing the essence of Vanadium. It is a kind of Aussie sounding CD, and in a whole world of bands to pick through to find a comparison, the most similar band I can think of is local band Dethlehem, almost a perfect fascimile in sound, style and general demeanor.

Vocals are generally just shouted at the crowd or sung in a breaking tone sort of like Hetfield in the "Kill 'em All" days, and lyrics are right down the line of typical Thrash, with titles like "Fight", "Preacher of Hate", "Pain", "Sabotage the System" and other genre typical buzzwords. Guitars, bass and drums are thrash and speedmetal oriented to the core, generally just pumping away with big riffs and traditional structures, but in a good way. Guitars have that fat bass-heavy sound poineered by Anthrax, low and dirty but sweetened with harmonic squeals and fast intricate leads and interspersed with mellower stanzas in a "Fade to Black" sort of way. Again, thrash metal to the core. In 1995 drummers were drummers, not ultra fast machines of mass destruction like they are now - hey, we all thought that Lars Ulrich was a great drummer in those days - so the drums don't stand out as all that remarkable in comparison to the modern day, but they are REAL, not DFH engineered, trigger-recorded and refined by Pro tools magic, and for that reason they sound really cool.

I won't go into detail of the particulars of each track, it seems to be a bit blasphemous to defile the purity of "The Damage Done" with excessive verbosity. Vanadium went through a few changes of members, and eventually became Kin, who along with Choke were the biggest local bands in the city in the late 90's. The world had spun on, thrash as it was had all but disappeared to make way for the new metal styles coming in, and Vanadium changed with the times. There are plenty of us who believed that they got better with time, but with the maturing sound came a change in band dynamics and attitudes and the last vestiges of Vanadium were lost.

So now 15 years later Thrash is experiencing a bit of a resurgence in popularity, and there are bands who are writing new material with a vintage sound to it. The reason it amuses me is that some of us who were there were unappreciative of the genre and some of us looked upon bands like Vanadium as a sort of oldschool dinosaurs, not up to date with the DeathMetal that we were playing at the time.... and yet I listen to it now with a real pang of nostalgia and really miss seeing those crazy fucks up there on stage. Hearing Vanadium again after all these years has dug up such memories in me, I find myself wondering how the bands you younger guys enjoy now will be remembered by you in the future decades. Get to as many gigs as you can, because before too long bands are gone, and their energy with them, CDs are a snapshot of a time past, but memories fade cruely .

I saw Vanadium live only 3 or 4 times, and after hearing "the Damage Done" again, I feel a deep regret that I didn't see them many more times, but at least they left behind them "The Damage Done" , and I can think of far worse things to have as a legacy.

Review by Jez.