Failed Cash Cow
They had a promising start did Mendeed. Another one of these dirty, melodic death metal bands from across the border; Mendeed were interesting new-comers but lasted just a few years. So, here we have it. The record company cashing in on the band they helped destroy? Probably not because everyone who knows of Mendeed will have all the songs anyway so why bother with this? It's not as if they had chance to get a reasonable amount of albums out.
But okay, if you still want to know what you can expect on this album I will explain. Mendeed played some kind of mixture of traditional thrash and heavy metal, and they added a modern sound and some nu metal influences to it. The various vocals (screaming and melodically singing) are brand marks. In the beginning of their career these dudes where still looking for a direction. This can be heard on songs like ‘Ignite The Flame’ and ‘Fatal Poison Whisper’. The single ‘Act Of Sorrow’ and a track like ‘The Reaper Waits’ already make clear that the gentlemen had their target in their sights. Most of the better tracks from this compilation are the songs from the ‘The Dead Live By Love’ album which begs the question, why bother buying this?
The strongest part of their setup are the dual guitars of Steven Nixon and Steph Gildea. They are able to play but also have the ability to get into a really good thrash groove. The band's songwriting isn't too bad with a few more memorable songs thrown in there. The vocals on this album go from death metal growls to hardcore yells to melodic singing. Solid but not spectacular, they take a backseat to the guitars on most songs when it comes to performance. In places, the vocals are down-right poor which seems to be a trend in a few Scottish metal band's I've heard of late. The production isn't that great either. They 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.
It's not all bad though. There is energy in there and you can tell the band are trying to push themselves. You could do worse, much worse! But given that this 'Best-of' is really just the same as "The Dead Live by Love", I suggest you go and get that instead. This whole endeavor screams of "Failed Cash Cow".