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Mendeed: Positive metal attitude

13/10/08 || The Duff

Mendeed, a band I am completely unacquainted with, are a British (from Scotland, no less – hence their signing to British label Rising Records) melodic death metal band. They’ve released two albums under said label, but also seem to have picked up the interest from major distributor Nuclear Blast, probably because their style of music was once incredibly popular, executed far better by bands like Shadows Fall, Killswitch Engage and God Forbid. Only one of these bands seems to have anything worth departing from the ol’ whorin’-cash for (going with Shadows Fall here), as much as all three are relatively gifted, as we should all know the Swedes did it best about ten years before melodeath’s massive take-off into the (American/British) mainstream – if you’re already aware of such a thing, skip on by to the score or plain simply ignore Mendeed. If you like In Flames/At the Gates worship with metalcore tendencies, adequate musicianship with a Shadows Fall-esque delivery (quite thrashy in places), then read on.

I’ll start off with the bad, the most obvious of which are either the vocals or the production. Going with the latter, these are best described as raging screamo mixed with Randy Blythe-extremely-lite, and some guttural variety that fails in disguising the fact that Dave Proctor doesn’t have the stomach for it; then the clean singing kicks in, which is very much like a poor-man’s version of Killswitch Engage’s Howard Jones and terrible nu-metal whining. In short, nothing redeems the vocals, giving the impression that Mendeed are trying to satisfy fans on either side of the fence, only managing to appease those residing within the “watered down metal shit”-area; this music, although not bad, will not appeal to those into extreme metal because of the vocals alone.

As for the production, it doesn’t sound like it’s coming from a band that has released a handful of E.P’s, singles and two full-length albums – these guys either don’t have an idea of what is best accommodating to melodic death metal when it comes to producing an album, or just don’t have the funds, something I strongly doubt with the backing of both Nuclear Blast and Rising Records. The guitars are very weak, thinly produced, with the drums taking center stage as far as the instruments are concerned, yet these sound too loud, not nearly clear enough (there are no triggers used, so organic is definitely a good way of putting it), and tend to drown out the rest of the band’s parts; worst of all, what has been given most attention in the final mix are the vocals.

Now for the good; although their years of experience might indicate otherwise (around six-seven years), these guys aren’t incredibly gifted musicians. Their arrangements are amateur, and their playing lacks a lot of variation, but there is very little of these drawbacks that affect the music’s enjoyability. This means that, as limited as they are, Mendeed seem to have a good grasp of how to exceed themselves, which means you get an album both raw and energetic, making “Positive Metal Attitude” very genuine and quite the lively listen. Sure, some of it is mundane, and they don’t sound much better than the average garage band with a couple years of experience, but I could definitely do worse; I’ve missed this kind of music, as it reminds me of the sub-par, easily-digestible bands I used to be into when I was younger – the three aforementioned bands up top do this much better, but if you figure you’re willing to take a risk, I don’t see how you could do any wrong at least checking this out from their MySpace.

5 you know you wannoos out of 10.

From Rising Records, ‘cos I’m too lazy to re-write the review:

“Its four tracks from a BBC radio one rock show live session and the rest are single B sides that were unavailable except for on the singles.”

So that should explain the production, and maybe the overall lack of experience; checking out some of their latest stuff (before disbanding, it would seem), Mendeed really seem to have upped there game. So there you go; if I wasn’t such a lazy journalist, I’d upgrade this to their favour.

Information
Released: 2008
Label: Rising Records
Website: Mendeed MySpace
Band
Dave Proctor: vocals
Steve Nixon: guitars
Steph Gildea: guitars
Chris Lavery: bass, vocals
Kevin Matthews: drums

Tracklist
01. Poisoned hearts
02. The reaper waits
03. Stand as one fight for glory
04. Beneath a burning sky
05. Laid to waste
06. Fall to me
07. Hollow
08. Messiah
09. The end of man
10. Divided we fall

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