Deathless

Revocation has always been a band that never disappoints. With every release they manage to outdo themselves, and boy have Dave's vocals improved since! While "The Outer Ones" is often cited as their greatest work, I think this band really hit their peak around the middle of their career with Deathless. Albums that have a strong opener are usually not ones to disappoint. With "A Debt Owed to the Grave" kicking off this album, Oh my god... the riffs are just disgustingly good. The guitar tone is absolutely crushing and they don't have to tune down a billion steps to make this track sound completely balls out heavy.

That's the case with the entire record in fact. Every riff is equally crushing and punishing in its own way. The use of harmonics, dissonance, and jazz chords, all combine to form one chaotic, yet beautiful package. In addition, the solos are so well constructed, it's an auditory orgasm every time. Normally the production would be a complaint, but it works so well with this album that I won't even bother. It's just so crushing and heavy I can't help but admire it.

A lot of the riffs and dissonant elements are reminiscent of the guitarist Dan's band "Artificial Brain", and it is very obvious that he played a massive part in this record. Rather than a regular technical death metal approach, this band manages to utilize many different elements and quirks to their advantage. All of these elements in turn, make it a thousand times more enjoyable to listen to. The songwriting is never dull and there are just passages upon passages of good riffs and thrashing energy. Every single track has something amazing and unique to offer. Great riffs are what they all have in common, but the addition of amazing guitar solos that sound like a cross between 80's shred and jazz really sets this album apart from the dull sweeping and feeless soloing most technical death metal has to offer.

Just as you escape from a beautiful solo, cascades of heavy riffs come forth and overwhelm the senses. The drumming really shines throughout these parts and one of my favorite moments on the entire album is after the solo on "The Blackest Reaches". It's a flurry of unique and beautiful melodies on the guitars, accompanied by crushing blast beats. It's just impossible not to break your neck to.

It's easy to see why this album made so many AOTYs when it was released. The beautiful melodies paired with crushing and driven brutality, paired with the thrashing abilities this band has been known for have made this one of, if not the best record I have ever heard. The added melancholy and experimental elements make this a stand out release from every other technical death metal, thrash metal, or progressive metal album. Deathless is just so unique and punishing, it's a must listen for anyone who enjoys tech death.

After a minor fuck up, the band has decided to change things up and instead of making an album that barely even sounds like an album from them. They made one that isn't only their best, but it's also one of the greatest modern tech death albums ever created. If you compare this album to their first record (the Cryptic Warning one) you will see how much they have changed, yet they still managed to pull out their most characteristic element: the mix of thrash and technical death metal. I have already said this in the previous reviews of the band's discography many times, but this time they just executed the formula so good that the previous attempt at making an album is already forgiven.

You might ask "what makes this album all that great exactly?" and I will try my best to explain. For me, it's important for an album to start out strong since it helps me get hooked easier, so I tend to like albums like this more, and guess what? This album has probably the 2 strongest opening songs in the band's catalogue. A Debt Owed to the Grave is your destructive technical death metal song, but with the added thrash metal licks here and there and an outstanding solo at the end that will leave you wondering what does the rest of the album has to offer. The title track, on the other hand, has a full blown thrash metal riff (with some technicality hinted here and there of course) with an incredibly catchy chorus.

This album also has some almost deathcore-like parts (breakdown-ish parts to be exact) which could be a warning sign for anyone who has a decent taste in music, but believe it or not they actually managed to use it tastefully and not throwing it in every single song and making it absolutely disgusting. The absolutely monstrous solos on this album are near impossible to describe, but luckily they speak for themselves. One thing that I also really fucking love about this is that the songs don't mash together and end up being background noise. You can clearly distinguish each song. The song that they decided to cover this time is million times better than the C-tier Metallica song they covered on their last album since this one actually suits them. They managed to cover the Morbid Angel classic almost as good as they did with the Faith No More song. Last but not least, I have to mention that this album cover is probably the best that they had up until this point.

This is the place where I should mention negative things about the album, but there is barely anything wrong with it aside from the deathcore elements mainly in Labyrinth of Eyes, but the thing is I can't give a technical death metal album higher rating than 95% because that's reserved for Atheist. If I really wanted to bring something up that I would have liked to hear on the album, then that would be the thrash metal vocals since the album focuses more on the growling side of the spectrum rather than my preferred thrash metal barking-like vocals, but then again this is just a minor complaint, since the growls are top tier.

Overall this is the magnum opus of the band and I am not sure if they will be able to outdo themselves ever again. This album literally hits every single possible sweet spot that's possible to hit for a technical death metal album.

There are no highlights since the entire album is fucking amazing and each song is just as good as the next.

Revocation struck in 2014 with the release of their fifth full-length album Deathless, following a streak of yearly releases since 2011 (when their Chaos of Forms came out). With this one, they have reached a more mature sound which has been a tendency in each one of their albums, comparing them with their predecessor; since the releasing of Empire of the Obscene in 2008 (or 2005 if we take into account their Cryptic Warning era).

The influence of classic thrash/death bands is evident, but the four piece band from Boston is able to show those influences under its own style; furthermore the inclusion of technical/progressive stuff gives us really dynamic passages along the whole album, taking the listener across super violent, fast and heavy songs, but also with beautiful and interesting melodies; slowing down at some points too (for example in Madness Opus). That dynamism makes the listener to keep his attention and interest for every song.

Their previous release (self-titled album), had some complaints about the band leaving aside heaviness in order to focus on the technical aspect; but with this release they integrated perfectly their precision- virtuosity in the interpretation of their instruments into the album’s flow (by the way, that precision is displayed in a delicious way in each one of the instruments, even bass guitar and drums, respectively in charge of Brett Bramberger and Phil Dubois; with some solos in songs like Scorched Earth Policy or Apex that highlight the rhythm section apart of their forcefulness along the entire album, as well as traditional epic and face-melting guitar solos, which let us hear the influence of Davidson’s jazzy/academic training and Gargulio’s forcefulness).

It’s worth noting that David Davidson’s vocal performance improved; he even added some clean vocals (for example, in the title track Deathless). Moreover, Davidson is occasionally matched by killer Dan Gargulio’s growls (for example, in Witch Trials) who also supports him in the awesome guitar work.

Highly recommended album for any thrash or death metal lover; doesn’t matter if you’re an old school fan or you’re more into modern metal.

Additional note: classy and interesting cover artwork (which pitifully, doesn’t have the band’s classic logo).

My highlights: Every single song.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Given that this made a lot of musician’s top 10 lists for 2014, I was pretty psyched to give it a listen. The riffs are very Black Dahlia Murder meets The Haunted. You get the ominous minor key variations of the former and the crushing thrash speed and melodeath alternations of the latter. Just listening to the solo from the opening track will help illustrate the combination. Drums are heavy on the double bass pedal. I do really like the snare sound as it comes through very crisp and live. The bass guitar is mostly buried in the mix, but occasionally makes a brief appearance, like on the Blood Mountain-esque interlude on United in Helotry.

The vocal delivery follows the same influences: half barked, half death. There are moments of clean(er) vocals, but they rang pretty flat for me. For example, Deathless opens with a well-executed and energetic (albeit not very original) riff that got me going. But when these vocals kicked in, I literally froze and cringed. I’ve heard worse, but that type of moment is something that should never happen. It’s poorly delivered and the lyrics’ simple Suessian structure do it no favors either: “Deathless the fire burns on and on, ceaseless we ride into the dawn, no turning back we’re too far gone...” etc. They’re not all bad though. Labyrinth of Eyes sports a nice vocal hook, but it feels far too much of a Mastodon rip to heap praise.

Said influences and others continue to pop up throughout the album. Labyrinth of Eyes, besides the obvious Mastodon nods, closes with an outro that sounds clipped straight from Periphery’s last LP. Heavy chug, tons of low-end, and virtually the same effects in use. With its relentless melding of thrash and melodeath, Scorched Earth Policy is another excellent song; except I’m pretty sure I heard it on one of the first two Haunted albums. I have written a few other reviews where I praised a band for melding styles, but I don’t feel the same about this one. Rather than using these other groups as reference points, songs feel like a collage of straight-up plagiarism. It’s something Quentin Tarantino gets away with in film due to how he works with the medium, but it just doesn’t work in music outside of a tribute album.

Maybe I’ve just become old and jaded. Listening to a good 6-8 hours of music a day (no joke), stuff starts to run together. To save my wallet, I have to start making decisions about either who did something first, or who does it better. These guys do what they do extremely well, but I don’t think they do it any better than those that came before them. They also have the disadvantage of being American. I have the unfortunate bias of feeling that the only true greats of this style come out of Sweden, Finland, and occasionally Norway. The upside here is that I will give Revocation the honor of best American thrash/melodeath act I have heard thus far.

In sum, Deathless is a well-executed album by talented musicians. Unfortunately it suffers greatly from a lack of originality. Standout tracks include A Debt Owed to the Grave, Labyrinth of Eyes, Scorched Earth Policy, and The Fix. This is another group that has a lot of potential, but needs to step out of the limelight of its peers and find some way to forge a path of its own. I await your next release to see if you rise to the challenge.

Coming hot on the heels of Revocation's somewhat disappointing, eponymous 2013 effort, Deathless seems like an immediate bounce back which adheres more closely to their original tech death/thrash blueprint without sacrificing some of the heightened proficiency that their current roster has brought to the table. I wouldn't say this is perfect, since there are a few components which I just don't think I'll ever really be into, but at the same time I'd have no problem dubbing it my second favorite of their canon, after the sophomore Existence is Futile (2009) which seemed to hit their creative peak. Add to that the classy tattooist/painter Tom Strom's cover art, and a generally more creepy vibe manifest through the leads, and this is certainly a fun, if not fervently consistent effort which should help continue the cultivation of their audience due to its no-nonsense, riff-driven aesthetics and solid musicianship.

Revocation still walks a similar path to that they've inhabited since they were known as Cryptic Warning, a hybrid of the guitar god thrash/speed metal of yesteryear (Megadeth, Slayer, etc) with the emergent progressive death metal of the early 90s (Death, Cynic, Pestilence), all bristling with the momentum and 'gusto' picking sequences attributed to Swedish melodeath masters like At the Gates and Dark Tranquillity when they were making their waves. All of the guitars are carefully plotted to provide a wide variety of pacing, structure and dynamic, but you still get that creeping feeling that they just can't nail down any one identity, nor are they striving to do so. There were parts on this disc that reminded me heavily of Black Dahlia Murder's gradual increase in death-thrashing inertia to a few riffing segments which, blended with the cleaner vocal tone (as in the "Deathless" chorus itself, or "Labyrinth of Eyes") feel a lot like Blood Mountain-era Mastodon; while some of more agile picking progressions almost rival Protest the Hero in their elasticity. However, when you really trace it to the roots, these guys are most heavily influenced by those 80s giants like Mustaine; they just armor and flavor it in a number of the trending sounds since.

And when I limit a judgment of the record strictly to the guitars, it works well in tunes like "The Blackest Reaches", "Scorched Earth Policy" and other numbers that stuck out to me even among a crowd of competence such as the rest of these. Phil Dubois-Coyne's drumming is a seamless fit to the almost mechanically shifting palette of riffs between more clinical, punctual thrashing and warmer, full-bodied chords in choruses like that of "The Blackest Reaches". Brett Bramberger's bass lines are usually just as adequate as the rhythm guitars, often deviating with some appreciable note choices, but I did find that they often got lost under the riff barrage to the point that I was only tangentially aware of their existence. But on the flip side, as much as I think David Davidson is an excellent musician and one of the most talented Massachusetts has ever birthed, I really just can't get into his vocals any more than before. He's assisted here by Gargulio, the other guitarist (progenitor of Artificial Brain, who you should also check out), but even in union the overbearing barks seem streamlined from that whole Pantera-through-metalcore lineage and lack any real charm, nastiness or atmosphere beyond pure testosterone...

The cleans are fine for some much-needed plot twists away from the growls and snarls, but even then they just sound like a lot of bands that have adopted the Mastodon style, ultimately indistinct. And that's really the hangup which prevents this from becoming a 'great' album, even if it's better than Chaos of Forms or Revocation or Empire of the Obscene. All the riffs and leads might not be equally ear catching, granted, but its the vocals smothering them all that just feel like a distraction and don't really take me further into the stories the band is trying to tell with its labyrinthine guitar-work. If you remember tech-thrash monoliths like No More Color, Deception Ignored, Endless War or even stuff Death was doing (Human, Individual Thought Patterns, etc), the vocals stood out just as much as anything else in the songs (not for their volume alone, as they do here)...they might have sounded weird, or flawed in many cases, but that just gave them more personality...the cadence and timbre of these barks just seem cut and pasted from a number of banal modern day groove, 'core or nu-thrash sounds, where even, and I hate to say it, a more brutal guttural might seem an improvement, or something unusual and attention-grabbing.

Fair is fair, though, and if this wasn't an issue for you on any of their prior body of work, then it is unlikely to dissuade you from this one, because though I nitpick, it's not like they're awful. The lyrics are acceptable, occasionally lame when they deviate from the horror/death metal tropes (like the self-referential stuff in the title track...'the blood of the insane boils in our veins'?...hardly), but I found the sheer songwriting and riff selection good enough here that I've gotten about a half-dozen listens through it, and will probably get just as many more, though it's not on the level of something like Vector's Black Future which burned itself into my imagination and has hung out there since. That said, Revocation are barking up a similar tree, unafraid to incorporate modern influences and that sense of melody and balance that a lot of their more brutal counterparts shy away from. And it's at least nice, that when you peel away those layers of paint, you know Davidson and Dubois-Coyne retain loyalty to that Golden Age of ideas and execution that so many other bands have either abandoned, or remain painfully unschooled in.

-autothrall
http://www.fromthedustreturned.com