The first set of photos were taken at the Vengeance band house where Guy, Mitch, and a couple of interim bass players had lived and where the band rehearsed. There were shot not long after Wayne and Dave had joined the band. There are also a few promo shots of the Mark III line-up.

Vengeance necessarily had to branch out to more radio-friendly music in order to compete with the metal-unfriendly local scene of mainstream clubs. To the dismay of long-time fans, they added tunes by bands they had always dispised like Van Halen, Sammy Hagar and Journey.

Metal had gone mainstream as well, and bands like Judas Priest and Scorpions began serving up Top-40 type tunes like Living After Midnight and The Zoo which the core members of Vengeance unwillingly covered.

However, original members Guy, Herb and Mike were unwilling to drop all the crowd favorites their fanbase came to hear, but Wayne flat-out rejected the Plasmatics, Maiden, Holocaust and other really heavy stuff, so Guy began singing those, eventually singing as much as 1/4 of the show.

The photos in the second set are from a kegger during this period, and you can see Guy singing lead while Wayne stands off to the side (he didn't play an instrument).

Terrible recording made from a boom-box cassette player on a low-bias cassette at the Turkey Creek party where the pics above were taken, but it gives you the idea.

The other mp3 is part of a song that Curt and Dave's band Rapid Fire played at a party where they shared the bill with Vengeance a few months before Dave joined Vengeance. Curt joined a few more months after that.

The guy who took the photos for the gig didn't like Wayne, there are no solo shots of Wayne at all. I remember this caused lead-singer-itis and bad feelings that were typical of the kind of attitude that soured the band on a classic lead singer frontman, that they were more trouble than they were worth, although this guy was particularly asinine, and was constantly trying to break the band up and get his buddies in.

After an unsatisfying stint playing the new material, the band underwent a radical shift. The Mark III line-up had not been a happy one, and there were a lot of hard feelings and animosity that led to almost all the members of that line-up leaving the band except Guy and Dave.

First, long-time co-lead guitarist Mike left and was replaced by Curt, Dave's brother. Less than a year later, first Herb and then Wayne left, mostly over personal clashes, but there were gigs scheduled, so Guy shifted first to bass and then took over lead vocals, and Vengeance became a power trio. They decided to concentrate on writing and recording originals and played very few live gigs with the line-up of Guy and brothers Dave and Curt.

Mike had joined the Tampa band Brat after leaving Vengeance, but had been disillusioned by their constant vacillitating between commercial and heavy music and ended up leaving. Ironically, right after Mike left Brat, David left Vengeance to join Brat for his own unsatisfying stint with them. After what seemed like thousands of auditions, Chuck replaced David on drums. Vengeance started recording the basic tracks for Predator.