Throwdown’s Dave Peters Reflects on Band’s Career Trajectory

So many bands from the metalcore explosion of the '00s are a distant, broken-up memory, like From Autumn to Ashes or Eighteen Visions -- and the list goes on. So why did mosh metallers Throwdown survive and thrive while so many of their peers split up?

"Our willingness to replace members," vocalist Dave Peters told Noisecreep. "I know it's comical, but there is truth to it. The guys doing this in this incarnation of the band at this time of our lives in 2010 love the music enough to make those sacrifices. Not that those members who were in the band before didn't, but we recognize that there are people out there who think that our lyrics and music mean a lot to them."

Peters continued, "There's even people out there who have Throwdown tattoos and I don't even have one. That alone drives us. We've been fortunate enough to have fans to inspire us to do what we do. We learned to appreciate the people who appreciate you."

The band has achieved a degree of success in this niche scene, which is something that they never expected. "When we were first putting out records and doing this for fun as a hobby, over a decade ago -- even when 'Haymaker' came out -- we never had expectations or any sort of crazy aspirations for the band," Peters, who initially played guitar before moving to vocals when Keith Barney left the band to do Eighteen Visions full-time, said.

"We were making songs and filling a gap for what we wanted to hear," he remembered. "Everything that came along with the surge of metal and hardcore in that time frame? You never can predict it. For us, we've been a band in one form or another for ten years. We toured full time for seven years and have been putting out records in this incarnation since 2003. We're just happy to be around and grateful that we have fans to bring us where we are, and where they take us, so be it."

Throwdown's latest, 'Deathless,' is out now via new label E1.