Haymaker

Haymaker

Editorial Reviews
College Music Journal, July 2003
...moshcore so brutish that it's barely street-legal.

Product Description
Throwdown have been the Orange County, California hardcore scene's flagship band since 1997, grabbing the torch lit by the seminal OC punk bands of the ‘80s and early ‘90s and carrying it to heretofore uncharted heights. Over the years they've shared members with Eighteen Visions, Death By Stereo and Bleeding Through, emerging first as a pile-up inciting joke band (yeah, yeah what's in a name?) but quickly developing into one of the most potent and vital bands in the worldwide hardcore landscape.

What's allowed Throwdown to persist and endure is the urgency of their music and a fiercely loyal dedication to their relationships with their friends, their fans and each other. They called one record "You Don't Have To Be Blood To Be Family" and they meant it. This is their lives, this is their blood, and this is, truly, their family.

"Haymaker" will undoubtedly become the next pre-game soundtrack to the live-setting. A Throwdown show is a sweaty display of solidarity between brothers and sisters, united through their diversity and a celebration of independent thought free from mainstream constraints. The band smiles and laughs as the pent up frustrations from the daily grind, the 9-to-5, the dark and confusing times in which we live, are unleashed in cathartic release. Throwdown is a bludgeoning force to be sure, but one put to good use. Get the record, learn the words, head out to the show and get yourself... "In The Family."

Haymaker

Tracks:

Intro (Never Back Down)
Walk Away
Nothing Lest
You Can't Kill Integrity
Forever
Hopeless
Declare Your War
False Idols
Slip
Empty Words
They Only Thing
Step It Up
Face The Mirror
Raise Your Fist

Album Description

Throwdown have been the Orange County, California hardcore scene's flagship band since 1997, grabbing the torch lit by the seminal OC punk bands of the `80s and early `90s and carrying it to heretofore uncharted heights. Over the years they've shared members with Eighteen Visions, Death By Stereo and Bleeding Through, emerging first as a pile-up inciting joke band (yeah, yeah what's in a name?) but quickly developing into one of the most potent and vital bands in the worldwide hardcore landscape.

Customer Reviews:

Not great, not bad.......2007-04-03

I listened to cd and I dont know how to explain this cd. I cant really explain to well I guess, but i'll try. The problem I had was the swearing. I usually dont have a problem with swearing, but the way this band did it ruined the cd. It seemed like every other word in the songs are F$%*. It sounded like they tried to damn hard to impress the youth by doing this. The cd held nothing speical at all, not what I really wanted to hear in a metal cd. If you want really inspiring music go and listen to a Hatebreed cd. This cd is alright, but the swearing was so stupid and out of place. HA! Thats what I meant to say, the swearing just seemed random and out of place. Thats what the problem with the cd was. Just add it here and there, not every other word. Probably would have been a better cd that way. To fans fo Throwdown, please do complain. Everyone has an opinion and that is mine.

"Wh00 needs brains when us gots brauns?!".......2006-12-09

You want the cold-blooded truth about this album? Okie dokie, how's this: it does not amount to much (if anything) more than a rehash of the hardcore scene and all those involved in its upbringing since the late Eighties? (Two of the most obvious bands Throwdown repeatedly and unabashedly cop are Biohazard and Hatebreed.) And, unfortunately, it's a lot worse than it sounds.

But even if this album didn't cop innumerable bands' sounds before Throwdown's time, "Haymaker" (the band's third full-length) would still sound as boring as it did when it was first released back in 2003. See, the hardcore/metalcore popularity explosion in recent years has both helped and hurt Throwdown. On the one hand, they formed in 1999, so they beat fair number of bands to the music scene, which just happened to become very popular only a few years later. Thus, nowadays, groups like First Blood and I Killed The Prom Queen look like a Johnny-come-lately so Throwdown don't have to. But then again, it's partially because groups like First Blood have since debuted (with material very similar) that "Haymaker" sounds so faceless.

It's indisputable that Throwdown don't even hold a candle to the groundbreaking hardcore groups of the past two decades, but it was very alarming to learn how well this album was received when it was released. I read one review that said it was among the best metalcore records of 2003. Sheez, was I the only one who was paying attention that year? There were so many hard/mosh/metal/tough-guy/breakdown-happy/whatever-the-heck-you-wanna-call-`em-core bands that released albums that year, there's no way that reviewer's opinion should be taken seriously. Maybe "Haymaker" had a tiny bit of novelty upon first listen, but I'll die before I say this C.D. has aged well. To compare this horribly unoriginal "music" to the quality of music produced by the likes of the previously mentioned Biohazard, Hatebreed, Terror, Chimaira, Devildriver, Black Dahlia Murder, and especially the almighty Lamb of God (all of whom released new music that year), is beyond silly.

Throwdown are, at best, interchangeable and negligible when compared with any one of those said bands. Even the worst of those above-mentioned bands makes this So-Cal quartet sound laughably amateurish. They can shred the pants off Throwdown any day of the week; they're so much smarter, more mature, capable, meaningful, advanced, complex, creative, unique, and easier to take seriously.

Aside from lacking any identifiable trait, "Haymaker"'s biggest flaw is that it is simply, well, simpleton. Hardcore has never exactly been a thinking meathead's forte, but listening to this might actually make you lose I.Q. points. The songs may sound fairly loud, but in all truthfulness, there's nothing "brutal" about these four twentysomethings. One could even argue they're not real metalcore -- because a true metalcore band would SOMEHOW be related to actual heavy metal. These guys are not. And that's a shame, because they're not much better at hardcore, either. All respectable bands who currently reside under that genre's label know how to riff somewhat well. Yes, some bands (Terror, for example) are better at it than others, but these guitar parts aren't even "riffs" at all. Tommy Love, the guitarist at the time, clearly has only a very rudimentary understanding of his instrument. But the band jumped to a major label (Trustkill Records), which supplied him with a polished, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink-production to help hide his lack of skill. Now all he had to do was downtune his axe as much as possible, and voila! His ginormous, grumbling, sometimes grinding power chord patterns have a crushing effect. Too bad there's no disguising how mind-numbingly uninteresting, basic, and repetitive they really are. As a result, the music is thunderously loud, but the songs don't ever go anywhere, and the momentum is permanently stalled.

The group's frontcrybaby, Dave Peters' vocals are equally as bad. For starters, there's only so much of that throaty, "I'm a tough guy" yell anybody can listen to. But surprisingly, this band's vocal style can't even match that of their peers. Take Unearth's Trevor Phipps, for example: the guy's a pest to listen to, but his vocal style has at least some believable emotion, urgency, and personality. By comparison, Peters is completely empty, lifeless, lazy, uncommitted, and apathetic. It's like he doesn't even bother trying to sound remotely real or decent.

Furthermore, his lyrics...my, oh my, his lyrics! On "You Can't Kill Integrity," the listener is treated to such intelligent, touching melodrama as "That's all there is left to say; but I've got one thing left to say...'you're dead to me!'"; but he cheers up by track twelve, "Step It Up," so he can try to be supportive of his fans (by bellowing a command--"You've got to believe in yourself!"--at them). Props for trying to be positive, but it's a very cliche (how many times have we heard Jamey Jasta say something like that?), and it still falls way short of being powerful, heartfelt, inspiring, and intelligent, and memorable. Finally, "Declare Your War," we're forced to sit through an episode of Peters hurling unamusing gang shouts of "F you!" back and forth between some other nameless knucklehead. (That shouldn't be suprirsing, though, because pretty much the whole album is littered with completely-out-of-place and inappropriate expletives.)

Put simply, "Haymaker" is a pitifully lifeless, fake, hollow, pointless, and heavily flawed piece of music. It's the sound of the music-industry putting a group of unqualified losers in the same room to create a "metalcore" band, all just for the sole purpose of raking in a few bucks while the iron is hot (while this type of music is popular). Throwdown have almost everything they needed to be successful: a group of angry young men and a big record label to market their product. Problem is, they have never had any kind of talent, creativity, intelligence, heart, spark, chemistry, personality, and a soul. This album is almost--but not quite--good enough to merit receiving insults like
"pathetic," "generic," "unnecessary," "boring," "grating," "exhausting," and "hopelessly uninspired."

The members of Throwdown might as well be robots that punch in for work at the recording studio at 9 AM and finish recording the whole record by 5 that afternoon. They're always really livid--that much is obvious--but since the lyrics are so terrible, you don't know why, and thus, you couldn't care less that some ridiculously over-dramatic, attention-grubbing clown feels the need to yell his head off for over 50 minutes. After all, when even he can't he doesn't seem to know what he's talking about, why should anyone take this album seriously? This is a hollow shell of a real band: no personality, just fabricated emotion that was made up in order to be as popular as the rest of today's metal bands. The album may try to interest (or intimidate) first-time listeners with a massive wall of mind-numbing guitar crunch, less-than-one-dimensional vocals, and idiotic lyrics, but once you get passed these things, all that's left is a harmless, useless, instantly forgettable piece of garbage. Even the band don't bother getting excited about their own music, so why should we? Why should anyone take them seriously, is a better question? Throwdown get by on overwhelming volume, corny, inoffensive anger (neither of which will appeal to any well-adjusted person over 13 years of age), some decent hooks (which vanish from memory ten seconds after hearing them), and an overall decent performance by the drummer (which alone prevents the album from getting a zero-star rating from me). It makes for a tolerable listen while you're listening to it, but it becomes painfully clear that you just wasted the better part of an hour as soon as it stops playing.

Stay away. For the love of all things good, PLEASE tell everyone to stay away from this at all costs.

Not Quite Hatebreed or Terror.......2006-09-21

Throwdown falls short of the mark those two bands set.. The vocals aren't tight and the guitars are a notch below.. The breakdowns aren't anywhere as powerfull or inspiring..Sorry but, they dont measure up..

finally up from the underground.......2006-08-08

With this release, Throwdown were finally able to gain the credit and respect that they had been striving for ever since 1997, when this album smashed through the barriers, and into everyone's cd players.
Throwdown are the typical straight edge hardcore band, with songs about family and scene unity, and anti-drug songs. Throwdown are a little more forceful with their lyrical message, basically sending death threats to friends who were once straight edge, but then turned their backs on the whole scene and started to do the things the straight edge community abhores. An excellent, excellent band.

Great sXe Album!!.......2006-05-19

Let me firstly say that this album was a freaking awesome hardcore album and that the music alone is great but personally, I am straight edge and I didn't buy the CD for the sXe lyrics or because these guys are edge. I bought this ablum because of the song "Declare your War" but then found so many other great songs.
Also, does the fact that they sing about sXe matter? If i bought an album where the artist sang about getting drunk or getting high on drugs I wouldn't sell it or hate the albums for it and I'm sure many other sXe-ers wouldn't either.

Average customer rating:

Haymaker Heart

Manufacturer: Leisure Time Records
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

Alt-Country & Americana | Country | Styles | Music

Pop Rock | Pop | Styles | Music
ASIN: B000CAJNS8
Release Date: 2005-01-25

Tracks:

Not In Iowa
Tell Me (You're The One)
Draw The Line
Just Shoot Me
Folk This (Kelly Cougar)
Wild Love
Too Late
Goo
Drinking Alone Again
21st Century Trailer Park
Down
Old Car
Take Me 2 My Home
Your Caboose
All Over Now
Run Again
I Adore
I Suppose
West Side
The New Colossus

Average customer rating:

Great album

Haymaker

Manufacturer: Blue Sky Foundry
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

Pop Rock | Pop | Styles | Music
ASIN: B000CAED7Y
Release Date: 2001-01-02

Customer Reviews:

Great album.......2006-01-09

This is perhaps the best CD I have ever heard. I strongly recommend purchasing it.

Average customer rating:

Haymaker
Haymaker
Manufacturer: Haymaker
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

Pop Rock | Pop | Styles | Music
ASIN: B000CAF90E
Release Date: 2005-09-13

Tracks:

Get It Right
Milky Fly
Nicotine
Burn
Bored
What If I
Not Running
Miserable
Give You Up
Regrets
13 Dogs
Wrap It Up

Average customer rating:

Haymaker
Throwdown
Manufacturer: Roadrunner
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

Hardcore | Hardcore & Punk | Alternative Rock | Styles | Music

Straight Edge | Hardcore & Punk | Alternative Rock | Styles | Music

Alternative Metal | Hard Rock & Metal | Styles | Music

General | Hard Rock & Metal | Styles | Music

Thrash & Speed Metal | Hard Rock & Metal | Styles | Music

Hard Rock & Metal | Imports | Stores | Music
ASIN: B0006TPFIM
Release Date: 2005-01-31

Album Details

Japanese Release featuring a Bonus Track

Average customer rating:

Outstanding in Their Field

Manufacturer: Haymaker Records
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

Pop Rock | Pop | Styles | Music
ASIN: B000CAKCWY
Release Date: 2004-05-18

Average customer rating:

Dream Ride Home
Haymaker
Manufacturer: My Cousins Management
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD
ASIN: B000005BYJ
Release Date: 1996-07-26

Tracks: