New York's own Merauder were on the forefront of the metalcore wave in the early '90s, and few bands have had the pleasure of receiving the worldwide attention and embellishing the genre's conviction as they have. With their formation in 1990, the band's early days were spent playing live shows with other old-school hardcore and metal notables such as Sick Of It All, Carnivore, Motorhead, Morbid Angel and the Cro-Mags, and along the way they released a pair of demos and contributed a track to the now legendary 1992 compilation, East Coast Assault. Realizing that they would not be able to fully progress with their original singer, Merauder sought out and recruited a young vocalist by the name of Jorge Rosado from the band Full Contact, which was the best decision they could have ever made. After a few more years of gigging and writing material, the band released a split 7" with fellow New Yorkers Stigmata in 1995, and immediately began an east coast tour with Biohazard despite still being unsigned. Their third overall demo (and first with Jorge fronting the band) showed that this band was ready to step up to the next plateau. By mid-1995 the band was signed to Century Media Records and quickly began work in the studio with Parris Mayhew, founding Cro-Mags guitarist and long-time friend.

Before their Century Media debut Master Killer was released the band were hand-picked by Fear Factory as the opening act for a string of 20 US dates. All in all, Master Killer has seen worldwide sales of over 30,000 copies, and Merauder have started to gain a rabid fanbase that carried over into their second studio release. Recorded at various periods and sessions throughout '98 and '99, Five Deadly Venoms (the title of course was inspired by the famous kung-fu movie) delivered in-your-face vocals combined with creative playing and song arrangements making this a unique, forceful and at times quite melodic metalcore album. The band did not do much touring for this release except for a few shows on the east coast and in Europe and this just led to fans