Revocation

After hearing the previous album, I am sure a bunch of people were excited to hear the follow up to one of the greatest albums of the genre. I was one of them and what we got wasn't exactly what we wanted. This is the Revocation album with the darkest atmosphere so far and hey, that could have been a good thing if it wasn't for one tiny mistake. THEY GOT RID OF THE THRASH!

I get it, bands have to evolve their sound or they become boring, but this is everything but fucking evolving into a better band. This is straight up regression, a deja vu to the first album (which I had already explained why it was bad). If you hear the name Revocation what comes to your mind first? Yes, that's right! Fucking blazing thrash metal riffs dueling with the technical death metal wankery complemented with death growls and thrashy barking. Sadly this album is missing half of it, namely the thrash metal riffing. During the whole album I had a strong feeling of listening to a generic tech death metal band who got David Davidson as a guest vocalist. While there are tracks like Fracked which try their best to bring back the same flowing thrash sound of the previous 3 releases (counting the EP and full-lengths), but then there are songs like Scattering the Flock which is just straight up tech death and has nothing going for it. They even get rid of the kick-ass vocals and replace them with "growling" entirely. Sadly the later kind of track are the majority here, making the otherwise promising few tracks near meaningless. I also have to talk about the fact that they choose to cover a (boring) Metallica song, so they have an entirely thrash metal song here so we get distracted by the fact that those elements are missing from the album entirely.

All that being said the album isn't horrible. It's just missing the essence of Revocation, but for what it is (generic technical death metal with a very few different genre elements hinted here and there), it's really not all that horrible. The guitar solos are almost as good as they were on the EP, the few songs that can be considered Revocation songs are cool (but they are not as good as any of the songs on the last 2 full-lengths) and they have the potential. The aforementioned dark atmosphere also helps the album out. It's interesting to see the band work with songs that are not exactly on the upbeat sounding side of the spectrum. There is also a rather nice "experimental" part on the song Invidious at the start with an almost banjo-like riff (also this song is luckily the part of the thrash minority of the songs).

Overall the band have made a mistake that they have to correct. Throwing away the sound of your band this easily isn't exactly the best idea ever, but for what this album is, it's really not all that horrible as the first album. Luckily the follow up is somewhat better (but more on that later).

The highlight of the album is: Invidious

It's not a good sign when the best song on an album is the first one. And with their self-titled album, Revocation start off brilliantly with opener "The Hive" before sinking into the mire of mediocrity.

But hey what a great song it is. There's a real demented modern thrash vibe here full of violence and wild abandon. The chorus especially comes across as the musical equivalent of a seizure with spastic riffs accentuated by bizarre little harmonics and death metal vocals.

At this point you can turn the album off and put something else on, lest you enjoy disappointment. There are some decent little moments ala "Fracked", "Scattering The Flock" or banjo laden "Invidious". Incidentally most of these are faster numbers. But too often the songs are rather boring mid-paced or slower melodic death songs that go nowhere and blur into each other. There is nothing wrong with variety in terms of tempos and vibe, but Revocation seem to be more at home thrashing it out than slowing down.

One can tell these guys can play their instruments well. There's some very nice guitar solos too. But too often the technicality appears to be for the sake of technicality as opposed to making the song more interesting or memorable. Even those better songs mentioned above have the odd pointless technical bits.

Flow is another issue. For example "Archfiend" is generally more melodic except its choruses abruptly shift to a more brutal tone. This doesn't help the vibe of the songs and results in a disjointed listening experience.

In the end this album is a frustrating affair. You can hear oodles of potential and flashes of brilliance. You get the feeling these guys could be huge if only

There is this stubborn cliche that you either love or hate a band, which is mostly utilized to articulate a perceived greatness in a band meshed with an appeal to a limited/fringe audience. For the most part, this tends to hold true, but one noteworthy exception is the quirky New England death/thrash outfit Revocation, which tends to command a more moderated reaction in most. They are the sort of band that are actually very easy to like without falling in love with, or being lukewarm to moderately annoyed by without extreme feelings of revulsion coming later. There might be a general disapproval for the embracing of the mid-2000s concept of slicing numerous stylistic trappings together in order to create a semi-modern, semi-classic niche that started to wear out its welcome towards the close of said decade, but overall, this band gets the job done well enough to keep one engaged while simultaneously not quite making that breakthrough into outright greatness.

With their fourth studio LP, which bears their own band name, Revocation find themselves fully moderating their already predictable formula into a somewhat safer, less jarring version of itself. The usual smatterings of classic Dave Mustaine riff-happy thrashing, blinding blast beat sections, quirky genre shifts and shouted vocals that typified Existence Is Futile are once again present, along with a slightly fancier dual lead guitar display accredit the recently recruited second guitarist Dan Gargiulo, who does a stellar job at matching the shredding yet highly idiomatic character of David Davidson's quasi-progressive infused lead work while not fully imitating him. The loss of bassist Anthony Buda sees the band taking a slightly more reserved approach to incorporating the instrument, which serves to downplay the technical aspects a bit compared to previous offerings, though this album does not come close to sounding like typical run-of-the-mill death/thrash.

The breakdown of things here follows a dual course of standard aggression with lots of technical detailing to a fairly multifaceted mix of rage and varying points of rest. On the more conventional side of things (relatively speaking) are an impressive display of busy riff work, presented in a very symmetrical fashion, as heard on "Scattering The Flock" in a bit more of a blasting cacophony of death metal influences, or a more thrashing character as on "Numbering Agents" and "The Hive" once the atmospheric prelude ceases. On the other hand, the occasional out-of-place gimmick such as a little banjo ditty near the beginning of "Invidious" and a set of jazzy, oddly placed rhythmic shifts on "Fracked" are some of a sizable, though slightly downplayed list of tricks employed to make a couple of typically proggy sounding death/thrash songs sound all the more unusual. More often than not, the whole arrangement is held together by the largely one-dimensional vocal shouts employed, which definitely hint at a greater Tardy/Schuldiner influence than the more inhuman character of this band's early flirtations with outright brutality.

When all is said and done, this album will only shock and amaze people who are new to this band and the signature style they share with a small number of technical bands. It's more of a rock solid, though slightly simplified restatement of what was going on with Chaos Of Forms, which was itself a fairly impressive though not quite brilliant album. Anyone who is less than hospitable to the idea of throwing together a lot of distantly related ideas in order to break away from the conventional character of death and thrash metal will probably find this album less than memorable, as the songs tend to listen longer than they actually are for all the stuff going on in them. But by the same token, those who have followed this band since they adopted the Revocation name will find more of the same, for better or worse. These mad Boston born virtuosos have an approach and they're sticking to it, right down to the elaborate album art work.

It's no secret that I harbored very high hopes for Revocation these past years: an astounding local live act with talented musicians making it to the next level for once, instead of the trendier type of band usually generated in New England. Unfortunately, their eponymous fourth album just reeks of burnout; not that it's void of a handful of compelling ideas and at a few points more creative than its predecessor Chaos of Forms, but there is clearly an evolutionary standstill with many of the rhythm guitars, which draw upon standard schemata of modern West Coast thrash, technical death and melodic 90s Swedish death, place them into a blender and sprinkle liberally with jerky techniques often associated with mathcore or metalcore bands like The Red Chord or Dillinger Escape Plan.

The result is their least impressive album to date, if not in terms of 'intense activity' then in sheer quality, with a slew of tunes flying frenetically towards the realm of forgettable. From the lazy title, to the negative space on the cover, to the music itself, it's painfully difficult to get excited. A handful of 'wow, that's neat' moments and then on with my day. The chief issue I'm having is with the vocals, a complaint I've lodged over the rest of their works which clearly is in no danger of being addressed. David Davidson is hands down one of the best guitar players in the Boston area, so tight and technically proficient that it makes others want to give up in shame; it's doubly impressive that he sings and plays simultaneously. But his barking is little more than a bland post-Anselmo metalcore bark with next to no variation or emotional resonance. Music this plotted and potentially devastating deserves a nastier inflection with some character, but every time he starts spitting out lyrics it's guaranteed to suffocate the riffing beneath. It was an issue with the prior works, but here, as the band reaches its most manic pacing, my lack of interest in this style of growl has 'come to a head'.

It might not even be a matter of finding someone new, but just fix the grainy, dry production, snarl with a little more reverb. With more charisma. There's a reason I could remember many of Hetfield of Schmier's lines instantaneously, but can't recall Dave's raving five minutes later. At best you're going to get some layered gutturals and snarls (like in "Fracked") but these still seem like I could pick up a random metalcore/deathcore record of the past decade and possibly find better. They need to be at LEAST as good as Vektor's. Beyond that, some of the 'mathy' riffing definitely seems like the product of a creative osmosis as the band have toured with a number of high profile hardcore or metalcore acts. There's not necessarily anything wrong with that, or with Revocation attempting to grow itself in multiple directions, but it felt a little distracting when I'm engaged in some highly technical, surgical death/thrash riffing and then it suddenly sounds like Ben Weinman or Kurt Ballou has hijacked the song. To be fair, these moments are a minority, but I guess I was just more impressed when the band was writing a more straight-up mesh of 80s thrash and seminal tech death influences on Existence is Futile. The lead sequences on this album are without question its strongest, generally supported by appropriate and exciting rhythm guitar riffs that are better than most of the verses.

These gripes aside, Revocation is not a record without some moments of incendiary bliss. Rhythms guitars in verses are more involved and (occasionally) engaging than your average rethrash throwback, because they are drawing from a wider palette of influences. Melodic tremolo runs, grooves, dystopian structures that can recount anything from SYL to Darkane...these guys aren't just farting out tunes over a single week, a lot of effort goes into the placement and diversification, a wealth of ideas playful and punishing. But that doesn't make them great songwriters, because the myriad riffs just aren't consistent in quality. Every song on the album has SOMETHING good in there, but you have to weed through a lot of average, non-compelling progressions to arrive ("Entombed by Wealth", "A Visitation" or "The Gift You Gave" in which they go all Amon Amarth-sounding in the chorus being prime examples). The commitment to variation is laudable, and like past efforts they don't shy away from cleaner guitars or jazzy Cynic-like explorations, but it really does seem that the chaff could have been cut off the wheat here, and Revocation rendered down to about 30 minutes of excellence rather than 52 of meandering.

I already mentioned the pratfalls of the vocal production, but otherwise this record sounds up to speed with their last few, without a lot of sparkle outside of the leads. The rhythm guitars have a lot of punch to them, mandatory when they're hitting the mid-stride grooves or the djent-like hammering ("Spastic"). You can almost always make out the new bassist Brett Bamberg, whose bouncy Blacky-meets-DiGiorgio tone fills in for the departed Anthony Buda quite sufficiently. Phil is just as sick and effective as ever before, maybe not considered an 'A-lister' in extreme metal drumming but he can fucking play anything regardless. There's a bit of a digital machine gunning presence to the fills, but the kicks roll along like brickwork, and he can match each shift in tempo with ease. Ultimately, I think I'd just prefer a 'remix' of this same album with about 10-15 minutes of fat trimmed off, and better vocals. The combination of flashy guitar work over a fusion of styles thrashing, deathly, whatever-core and progressive will undoubtedly dazzle a generation of listeners reared on anything from Vektor to djent, but the songs aren't as distinct as Existence is Futile. Not a bad album, despite the issues I had, but Revocation will have to trawl harder for its inevitable(?) masterpiece.

-autothrall
http://www.fromthedustreturned.com

Massachusetts (US) metallers Revocation strike like lightning with their latest full-length, and fourth total, the self-named, Revocation. This four-piece has been ripping and shredding since 2006 and have become one of metal's most premier bands. Their music is highly guitar driven; with blistering riffs, speed, and agility they forge a technical and thrash-inspired brand of death metal. They have quickly attained high accolades for their previous albums, and with Revocation, they may have just sealed the deal for immortality. This album is top-notch excellence.

Revocation is a ten song masterpiece. The deluxe version comes with an additional bonus track; one of the best covers of recent times, Metallica's "Dyer's Eve". As a collection, the songs make up what can only be hailed as one of the greatest releases of 2013. Revocation captures the band in peak form and is without a doubt the band's finest work to date. Every track is cemented in the purest form of talent; the songwriting, the musicianship, and the production is absolutely stellar, energetic, and endearing.

Once again, Revocation light things up with their guitars. This album boasts some of the best riffs, solos and guitar work of all time. Although they stand as the band's most lethal weapon, nothing can be taken away from the drum and bass performances either. Together, Revocation shred through this album with precise and devastating attacks. Each song shines bright and robust, and each give a strong impression, making Revocation a very memorable ride. The album starts strong with "The Hive" and continues forth with other standout tracks including, "The Gift You Gave", and "Invidious". The whole album, however, is excellent and it's hard to pin point any song that's better than another. The inclusion of "Dyer's Eve" is also a treat and the band executes it perfectly. Also notable, is the band's use of unique acoustic elements woven throughout the record, including banjo. Revocation is as intriguing as it is engaging.

Overall, Revocation just kills it! The band have put forth every effort on this one, a fact that is evident upon first listen. Revocation are an unbelievable band and one that will continue to dominate in the future. All metal fans would be doing themselves an injustice by not picking Revocation up. As stated, it is one of the top albums of the year.
***Originally written for and by www.deathportal.net