After seeing a post on Twitter that said that San Diego Death Metal band Pathology signed with Victory Records, I was very curious of the situation. As far as I knew, Pathology was on Comatose Music, an independent label out of my current home state of NC. I don’t know all of the details as I’m hoping to find out what is going on from Comatose Music soon, but I wonder why after all the bad press Victory and Tony Brummel has received over the years, why any band would sign to Victory?

Sure there are plenty of bands that are currently signed to Victory that are well known names in metal such as Carnifex, Between The Buried And Me, Emmure, Darkest Hour, Autumn Offer and the list goes on. In the past though there have been many artists that have left the label in dispute of royalties. That list goes on as well to include Hatebreed, Atreyu, Taking back Sunday and Hawthorne Heights, among many, many others.

Victory may be one of the “bigger” indie labels out there with more mainstream bands than some of the other indie labels, but their track record is not very good. Tony Brummel has been called many names and none of them being of nice nature or of ethical business standards.

Another band that most recently signed to Victory that had much success with larger labels in their earlier years is Taproot, but times and music has changed and therefore Taproot just are not as relevant as they used to be, though their latest release “Our long Road Home” was a pretty good rock album.

I would just think that labels like Victory and Trustkill would be black listed per se, in the proverbial book of “Record Labels To Avoid”.

If you want to know more about some of the scandalous and sketchy things that have gone on in Victory Records, READ THIS. Sometimes it’s a bit hard to follow as to who-is-who in the story, but you’ll get the basic idea of what kind of person Tony Brummel is. You can also just Google Tony Brummel and you’ll find much more negative than positive about him.