Throwdown
By: Don Sill
 While touring with Lamb Of God, Fear Factory and Children Of Bodom many metal fans were introduced to a band called Throwdown for the first time, but Throwdown is far from unseasoned or untested.
Truth is, Throwdown has been one of Orange County’s flagship artists since 1997. With seven years under their belts the hardcore outfit has shared members with Eighteen Visions, Death By Stereo and Bleeding Through and has faced their fair share of trials and tribulations by breaking away from the underground hardcore circuit and crossing genres in order to get their sound to the masses.
The current line-up of Dave Peters (vocals), Dom Macaluso (bass), Tommy Love (guitar), Matt Mentley (guitar) and Ben Dussault (drums), Throwdown has emerged from a tongue and cheek joke band into one of the most potent and vital bands in the global hardcore landscape.
Their latest DVD, Throwdown: Together. Forever. United., on Trustkill Records, is a 120+ minute feature encompassing Throwdown's entire history, starting from their very first show in OC in 1997 to present.
Alongside song videos and other extra footage, the DVD is mainly an insightful band documentary, splicing together interviews, live footage, and the band's surprisingly humorous tour antics into a genuinely entertaining film about the hardcore scene.
Don Sill spoke with vocalist Dave Peters while on the road recently:
Blistering.com: You guys are on tour with Lamb Of God, Fear Factory and Children Of Bodom – what a diverse show that is.
Dave Peters: Yeah, it’s pretty amazing. There’s definitely a lot of diversity on this tour and we’re somewhat of the oddball and we have a lot of people asking us what we’re doing on such a metal tour. But, we’re good friends with the Lamb Of God guys and got to know The Children Of Bodom dudes pretty well and we’re having a good time. We’ve been well received on this tour and so we’re stoked.
Blistering.com: It seems like the fans of all these types of heavy music are beginning to merge into big force.
Peters: Totally, man. We’ve been pleasantly surprised. I mean bands like Children Of Bodom and Lamb Of God will draw the purist metal fans to the shows so some of the crowds get kind of rough but we do get a ton of kids who’d we’d never expect to listen to our music talking to us at the end of the shows. It’s been great exposure for us.
Blistering.com: You guys are not rookies to the scene; you’ve been around for almost seven years now. Have you guys reached your goals at this point?
Peters: We never did this band on a full-time level until this year, really. So, even though we’ve been around for seven years and we’ve all been friends for a long time we haven’t really taken this band with full force.
Blistering.com: Why?
Peters: Well, we’ve always kind of took the approach of letting it take it’s own direction and see how far we could go with it. Whether it be staying in the hardcore game forever or branching out into the metal world or whatever. But, at this point I’m surprised because I never thought we’d make it as far as we have and things seem to just keep getting better for us. I guess we don’t have a specific goal for the band; we just want to try and get our music out to as many people as we can and just reach new audiences.
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