IF VICTORY RECORDS PAYS ROYALTIES TO BANDS THE SAME WAY THEY PAY THEIR BANNER AD BILLS…

… then Taproot are about to get fucked! Welcome to the club!

The news that Taproot have signed with Victory is a head-scratcher, to say the least. For one, the Ann Arbor, MI-based nu-metal turned radio-alt-metal band sounds nothing like any of the other bands on Victory. I believe that a big part of a band’s success on any given label is directly correlated with how psyched the label’s employees are about the project, and this especially holds true for smaller/niche labels. That said, I can’t see the recent college grads that signed on to work for A Day to Remember and Silverstein getting amped up to do menial work for Taproot.

But moreso, haven’t Taproot heard the myriad Victory Records horror stories?

It can’t be coincidence that one label enters litigation with so many of their bands… we don’t hear bands bitching about their treatment on Metal Blade or Century Media (for example), and we talk to bands on those labels and others constantly. Perhaps Taproot are so far removed from the Victory “scene” that they really haven’t heard… or maybe after basically self-releasing their last album they’re just happy a relatively bigger label offered them a deal. Either way, Tony Victory is a helluva salesman, I’ll give him that.

I always kinda liked Taproot, and not just because I lived in Ann Arbor for five years (ok fine, maybe kinda). Their early stuff was hit or miss (mostly miss) but when they ditched the nu-metal shtick in favor of catchy radio metal they ended up maturing and developing into a really decent band. It’s the opposite of the career trajectory that most bands follow, but it worked. Our Long Road Home was kind of a clunker though, so we’ll see whether Victory will give the band the support system they need to make a decent record.

-VN