Vengeance is the seventh album (or eighth, depending on how you count it) from Florida nu-metal veterans Nonpoint - a band who have survived by taking a tip from Charles Darwin.
Nu-metal was like the dot-com bubble for the music industry, and not just because of the similarities in timing. When the smoke cleared, a few of the big names had gained enough momentum to launch out on their own, a few others became maimed parodies of themselves (yes, Durst, we’re looking at you), and a whole bunch of others were left at on a train with no engine. The sensible ones took the same course as Nonpoint. They evolved.
Vengeance shows that Nonpoint have their ears to the ground for what’s current on the heavy metal scene, but they’ve kept certain aspects of their original sound as well. Most notable on the side of the more modern styles are the understated riffs and chords of guitarist Andrew Goldman; he’s obviously been listening closely to the Southern-tinged sounds of contemporary metal and blending some of that bluesy growl with the rap-metal grooves of the late nineties.
The result is quite refreshing; the Southern metal influence has added a degree of melody to the proceedings and reduced the prominence of the more lumpen nu-metal riff-work. There are some rich and striking guitar textures on Vengeance too – which just goes to show that helping the producer at the mix-down stage has its benefits!
That producer was Matt Laplant of Sikth – and it’s interesting to see how little he’s made his own sound impinge on Nonpoint’s own ideas. That said, Vengeance would have been improved had Laplant managed to conjure up the wild-eyed intensity of his own band from Nonpoint during the recording process.
Still, there’s twelve solid tracks here, and while they lurk in the vicinity of the nu-metal blueprint (much like the regrettable cartoon sleeve art), they largely avoid its worst excesses and have enough variety to make Vengeance a decent enough album.
“Wake Up World” opens the album with a phased riff from Goldman before exploding into a chunky mid-paced number that has “single” written all over it; so does title track “Vengeance”, with its cheesy but memorable refrain of “burn this city to the ground”.
Vengeance only once truly crosses the line into the pubescent ADHD machismo of nu-metal; “Everybody Down” has the sort of riff that made the style so successful the first time round, but the lyrics are a reminder of how quickly and easily it became a cliché.
“Bring Me Down” is probably the most contemporary tune on the album, with Elias Soriano’s vocals doing a passable Deep-South growl to match Goldman’s guitar work, and there’s a good attempt at the ‘big slow epic’ template in the form of “Breathe”. Vengeance isn’t exactly brimming with innovation, but it’s a coherent record with a distinctive sound that will work well on school-bus iPods as much as on the live circuit.
While Nonpoint may have never made it big, they’ve never fallen from a height either – a look at the list of bands of their era shows a lot of drop-outs and also-rans. Nonpoint are survivors – and in an industry like this, sometimes that’s the best sort of Vengeance you can hope for.
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