The second Masterless record Vendetta Unaccounted is mostly about vengeance and the feeling of having unfinished business to attend to. Little did I realise at the time , but that’s exactly how the process of getting this project done was going to feel like.

Writing for Vendetta started before A Darker Season was completed in 2006. In fact some of these tunes would have been part of that record except I couldn’t release a double disk for lack of funding and connections and they just wouldn’t fit on one disk.

Up to four or five tunes were already written and the remaining ones written between 2006 and 2008. Recording and first mixes took place in 2008 with target to release in 2009. That however was not to be…

At the time it had not been long since I relocated from South Africa to England. As such I was living under my father’s roof. He was also a musician and we often collaborated. So it was a win win scenario.

However, one early February morning of 2008 I woke to find my father hanging from his bedroom ceiling. He’d always warned us (his kids) that he would one day “cash out” as he called it. Preferring to go out on his terms rather than become frail and wither.

Unfortunately this turned my entire world on it’s ass and right then just when I needed it most the financial crisis of 2008 happened.I ended up selling my ’59 Reissue Les Paul and White Randy Rhoads RR24 you see below to temporarily patch up some debts .

The original tracks for the record were lost in the mess of trying to sort out my father’s affairs and get myself a place to live and to take time to mourn. Once the dust had settled which took years, I only had the first round of stereo mixes left to work with. They needed work which is difficult without having the instrument tracks. So I had to improvise…

The main issues were that the guitars simply weren’t up front in the mix. The rhythm section sounded fantastic though. So I overdubbed some extra guitar work over the top and re-recorded some vocal work as not all of that had been completed. It was nightmare to patch this thing back up with phasing issues and that type of thing plaguing the process.

From the time of my father’s passing to release it took 8 years to get that fucker done. It’s not perfect by any stretch of the imagination. But there is only so long you can spend with the same cathartic material especially when it reminds you of one of the darkest times in your life.

Although from an audio perspective , it’s a bit messy sounding and there are some off notes here and there from the original scratch tracks , I’m still proud of the overall sound and of the songs themselves. They’re challenging to play and the album has a lot of cool stuff on it.

From here though, it’s finally time to start crafting something that’ll live up to where I am as a musician now and not something attached to who I was in 2008. Stay tuned for more as it is now definitely coming…