Review by Greg on January 31, 2026.

During the last review challenge, I touched on a very interesting album, "Brave New Holocaust" by Violent Night. If you're familiar with the neo-thrash scene, chances are you've already heard the name Vindicator. Violent Night was the first serious experience for almost all their members, but the project was soon abandoned in their favour. Now, within the review I hinted more than once at how Vindicator never did pretty much anything remarkable at these ears, the main drawback being frontman Marshall Law's delivery. After some more spins, I gotta admit that their amateurish debut "There Will Be Blood" is occasional, unadulterated fun, and "The Antique Witcheries" ain't that bad, with the flawless leadwork of Mikey B. Lial particularly shining, even if Law tries his best to bring it down with his lifeless shouting. All in all, I'd better partially rectify my initial take: two solid listens, no more, no less. Vindicator's 3rd and, until recently, latest effort "United We Fall" sports a potentially interesting change, with rhythm guitarist Vic Stown taking care of the mic as well.

The problem is, Stown is almost as one-dimensional as Law in his delivery. You've got to be kidding me!

On the upside, his performance is more in line with how the late Wayne Holocaust (R.I.P.) handled the aforementioned Brave New Holocaust. He also attempts half-sung parts, which are the perfect match for Vindicator's rather melodic style. Tracks like 'Bastards of Noise and Aggression' or 'Fatal Infection' aren't half bad, and rather benefit from it. The latter reaches a nice climax which seems like a bridge, but adapts itself as an ending well enough. Nevertheless, I'm happy to announce that, to my partial surprise, I've stayed interested for a good part of United We Fall, also thanks to a song like the hard rock-inspired 'Hail to the Thief', which 'officially' predates Violent Night's 'Bite of the Chrome' (but I wouldn't be surprised if they already rehearsed it in the past, since the chorus riff follows a very similar progression), and I suspect Stown must have recorded his vocal parts in this song while dreaming of auditioning for Megadeth. Nice solo at the end, also – newcomer James J. LaRue most of the time doesn't make you miss B. Lial, worth noting also his great work on 'Man Undone' (one of the fiercest on the record) and 'Bastards...', and even a 'Tornado of Souls'-esque moment in the closer (with all due proportions).

Just when I thought a few things could go wrong at this point, the title track was unfortunately disappointing. Stown is at his worst here, and the long, almost ambient interlude (well, for thrash standards, at least), while relaxing on its own, doesn't entirely fit in my opinion. All in all, the supposed epic and central brick in the underlying concept (even if a loose one) doesn't fully justify its length. Luckily, the couple 'At War with Thy Neighbor'-'Fire Escape' provides a late highlight to the album, and the last instrumental 'Obsoletion' stuck well with me, as a sucker for almost anything with an acoustic guitar in it. The lyrics, if you care, kept rising on the political scale, with 'humanarchy' and 'divided states of America' being some unfortunate Havok-worthy examples, and some tracks also see the band experimenting with spoken samples.

While Vindicator's brand of melodic and often high-speed thrash should really appeal to me, I think they have yet to release a truly impressive album. United We Fall, though, is the most consistently enjoyable so far. I guess I'll have to cut these blokes some slack, finally. Well done.

Rating: 7.5 out of 10