Vengeance (ex-Honest Crooks, ex-Caged Existence) unleash debut single, 'Anguish'

Former members of Caged Existence, Justice For The Damned, & Honest Crooks pull together to make Vengeance. 

Last year, NSW heavy act, Honest Crooks, gave their vocalist at the time, Jerry Chard, the boot. For as the local music scene's rumor-mill at the time put it, the firing was down to him supposedly cheating on his girlfriend with a member of another Australian hardcore band. With Hellsworth's Heaviest then switching around their line-up and moving forward, dropping their thick-ass 'Damage Control' EP, Jerry has since been out of the picture, and as it turns out, working on a new band: Vengeance.

Revealing themselves this past week with their debut single, 'Anguish,' guitarist Paul Hammond and bassist Angelyn Boado are both ex-Caged Existence members, with fellow guitarist Nathan Kershaw (ex-Justice For The Damned) completing the line-up of the Melbourne-based Vengeance. Full of angst and fight riffs, 'Anguish' sounds like that: pure anguish, delivered via a lethal dosage of death-metal-laced, heavy metallic hardcore and pissed-off, call-out lyrics, that to me personally, really do read like a big 'fuck you' to the previous band of the Vengeance frontman.

Mixed and mastered by Alpha Wolf's Scottie Simpson, as far as a first introduction goes, 'Anguish' is decent. Of course, that doesn't stop Vengeance from sounding like pretty much every other Aussie metal/hardcore band going right now, what with this burly, brooding, buzzing heavy sound: think a similar style to that of groups like Cursed Earth, Falcifer, Crave Death, Ill Natured, Life's Ill, Honest Crooks, Justice For The Damned, and so on. But it's also not half bad either. So, swings and roundabouts.

Their debut EP, 'Retaliation,' is yet to have a release date, but will drop sometime in 2020.