REVOCATION: “REVOCATION”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Jul 182013
 

(TheMadIsraeli reviews the new self-titled album by Boston’s Revocation. For another opinion, check out BadWolf’s review here.)

I’m pretty sure I should be in the ER right now for all the bones I just broke moshing and headbanging to this album, but duty calls.  Revocation’s S/T is pretty much the shit.  Maybe more than the shit.  Certainly their best album to date, most brutal, most technical, and just downright fucking nasty, grimy, and vicious in every way possible. Last year’s Teratogenesis EP in no way will have prepped you for this bad boy.  It takes no prisoners, it shows no mercy, I’m still trying to figure out how they managed to make an album this malicious and rabid.

Revocation, along with bands like Vektor and Sylosis, have really proved that one of the few ways (maybe the best way) for thrash metal to achieve legitimacy in the current world is to completely assimilate itself into death metal frameworks with jazz influences and black metal touches. In fact, this may be the new standard. I mean yeah, I heap praise upon bands like Evile and Havok, but I have no problem also saying that, as good as they are, they still pale in comparison to bands like Revocation — because bands like Revocation are paving the way for the future of metal as we will know it.

I know some observers already consider Revocation to be a “death metal” band per se, but I entirely disagree.  The band’s character is definitely more in line with thrash; the music is an organized anarchy, a barrage of Molotov cocktails and riot shields crashing into each other, the sound of civilizations collapsing beneath the frantic violence of life itself.  Nowhere is this more evident than on their new self-titled opus.  This record is chaotic as fuck and holds nothing but warriors’ pride in that fact. Continue reading »

REVOCATION: “REVOCATION”

 Album Reviews  6 Responses »
Jul 182013
 

(BadWolf reviews the new album by Revocation. For another opinion, check out TheMadIsraeli’s review here.)

You pick up a record, and find one phrase, even one word, on the cover—it sends a message. “This is a singular experience. This word is the definition of these sounds, and vice versa.” A self-titled album, then, should either be a band’s self-estimated masterpiece, or, at the very least, a record that best encompasses a band’s sound.

One should not self-title an album lightly—to do so is to make a major artistic statement frivolously. It’s like a superstition—a dicey proposition. I can think of four self-titled metal albums off the top of my head: Metallica’s 1991 blockbuster, Avenged Sevenfold’s best-forgotten stinker, and Killswitch Engage’s two(!) eponymous records. All four fail at defining those bands. Metallica will always first-and-foremost be the band that recorded Master of Puppets; Killswitch Engage will always be “That band with the black guy that did the heartbreak song.” (Sorry, Jesse Leach).

Enter Boston’s Revocation, releasing their self-titled record just in time for this year’s Summer Slaughter tour. While I don’t see Revocation reaching the mainstream-appeal of the aforementioned bands, it’s realistic at this point to see the band making records as a career for the foreseeable future. Unlike most other bands playing technical-melodic-death-thrash-insert-adjective metal, Revocation can craft a good tune, and have a certain general appeal as well.

That appeal is David Davidson, the band’s lead guitarist/vocalist/songwriter, whose distinctive harsh vocals and expressive guitar leads give Revocation something most modern metal bands absolutely lack—personality. Honestly, the band should just call the album “David Davidson” and be done with it. Continue reading »

REVOCATION: “INVIDIOUS”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Jul 112013
 

Not long ago Metal Sucks premiered another new song from the next album by Boston’s Revocation, which is set for release on August 6 in NorthAm via Relapse. The new one is called “Invidious”. It is . . . how shall I say this? . . . a big-booted kick in the ass, plus banjo.

It romps, it stomps, it rocks, it rolls. It thrashes, it smashes, it swarms, it shreds (of course). It has a bass drop, it has a clean-ish chorus, it has gang shouts. It has hooks, it’s arena-ready. Plus banjo.

My only complaint? Needs more banjo.

Go HERE to listen for yourselves. If you haven’t heard the first song from the album that premiered previously, you can catch that after the jump.

P.S. This whole album is awesome. Continue reading »

NEW REVOCATION: “THE HIVE”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Jun 182013
 

Boston’s phenomenally good Revocation have a new, self-titled album scheduled for release by Relapse Records on August 6. (It’s available for pre-order here.) Within the last hour the first advance track from the album exploded on YouTube. The song’s name is “The Hive” and damned if it doesn’t sound like a hive full of thrashed-up hornets swarming in a syncopated dance, bursting with venom and slightly delirious. A couple of those hornets bust out a sweet guitar solo, too.

Damned fine song, which you can hear next: Continue reading »

EYE-CATCHERS: REVOCATION AND MISERY SIGNALS

 Eye-Catchers, Metal News  5 Responses »
May 232013
 

Last night I was talking with my NCS comrade DGR about the fact that we never just copy and paste PR announcements, and about how uninteresting we find most announcements about new music that don’t include actual music. But of course there are exceptions, such as the two featured in this post, where the artwork alone is enough to catch my interest. Also, I’m more inclined to make exceptions when I’ve been out carousing late the night before and have awakened with a hammering hangover and all of today’s posts in various stages of incompletion. Hypothetically speaking, of course. I’m not saying I did that last night. But would you please speak very, very softly for the next few hours?

REVOCATION

I have no new music from Revocation to share with you, unless you count the few song fragments that appear in the studio videos I’m going to stick in this post. What I do have is the artwork (above) for their fourth album, which I really like. It’s by Orion Landau, who has created album covers for the likes of Dying Fetus, Obscura, and Nile.

I also have a release date: August 6 (via Relapse). I have the track list, but I don’t know who really cares about song titles. There are ten of them. I also have the album title: its name is Revocation.

And then I have those two studio videos that have been released so far, plus I have tour dates. Most of these dates are for the SUMMER SLAUGHTER tour. Come to think of it, I don’t think we’ve yet posted the SUMMER SLAUGHTER schedule, so that might be interesting to some of you. Mainly I’m writing about Revocation because I’m a big fan. Also, could you please try whispering? Continue reading »

BACK FROM THE FUTURE WITH REVOCATION

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
Oct 112012
 

 

The engineers at Scion have apparently figured out how to make time machines as well as cars. I know this because yesterday Scion A/V released video footage of a reunion show by Boston’s Revocation from the year 2055. The clip shows them performing “The Grip Tightens” from the band’s new EP Teratogenesis. The song seems to have stood the test of time, because all the geezers in the nursing home where Revocation crank up the song seem to be diggin’ it.

It’s really good to see that the guys have stayed together over the course of many decades, and that they can still cause women to throw their panties during shows. They’re still pretty spry, too, for a bunch of old fuckers. Sure, they need some oxygen supplementation and added dietary fiber, along with the occasional helping hand from the nursing staff, but fuck, they can still really bring the shred.

“The Grip Tightens” is a mind-blowing song. The video, directed by David Brodsky, is a really big smile, too — one of the year’s best. Don’t miss the cameo performance by guitarist Evan Duplessis from Sexcrement as Dr. PeePaw. Watch it after the jump. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: REVOCATION — “TERATOGENESIS”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  4 Responses »
Oct 082012
 

(In this post, TheMadIsraeli reviews the Scion A/V release of a new EP by one of our favorite bands, Boston’s Revocation.)

I’m just gonna put this out there: Scion A/V are my heroes.

So we’ve got a new FREE EP from hybrid deathrash hoplites Revocation titled Teratogenesis.  I don’t even know what the fuck that title means, but I love the album art and this EP contains some of the best music Revocation have written so far.  The assault of Teratogenesis is definitely more brutal and more focused as compared to the band’s last opus, Chaos of Forms, which I reviewed last year.

It seems that when a band does an EP, especially if it consists of material meant only for that EP, the result tends to be more intense.  I like this situation, because it’s here when a band just goes completely balls-deep with the more brutal aspects of their sound.  As such, don’t expect to find anything on Teratogenesis comparable to the more experimental numbers found on Chaos of Forms.

Teratogenesis is nothing but an adrenaline rush of hyper-speed fusion metal that definitely brings more of Revocation’s thrash influences to the forefront.  Everything else Revocation are known for is still here, it’s just that apparently they wanted to write something fast as fuck, which this EP definitely is.  Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: NEUROSIS, REVOCATION, HACRIDE, JAY-Z / SWIZZ BEATZ, AND BIG CHOCOLATE

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Sep 212012
 

Sifting through what the interhole brung me this morning, here are things I saw and heard that I thought were worth sharing with you. Fair warning: musically, this shit is all over the place, including places outside of metal (gasp!).

NEUROSIS

This band have a new album set for release in Germany on October 26, in the rest of Europe on October 29, and in North America on October 30, just in time to scare the shit out of small and adult-sized children on Halloween. The album is named Honor Found In Decay. The band themselves are calling it “their pinnacle studio effort”, which scares me. I witnessed a live Neurosis performance last year for the first time, and for the first time in my life I wanted to kill myself by the end of it. Do I want that feeling again?

That was a rhetorical question. Though I’d rather not have that feeling again, I can’t help but be drawn to this new album, especially after hearing the track that NPR premiered this morning. Its name is “At the Well” and it’s mesmerizing. It falls down on your head with cataclysmic impact and it shimmers with ethereal light and it rumbles and rolls like an avalanche. It’s agonizing and it grooves and it’s loaded with interesting synthesized sounds. It did not make me feel suicidal.

It’s very much worth hearing. Go to THIS PLACE to do that. Continue reading »

DYING FETUS / JOB FOR A COWBOY / REVOCATION — LIVE IN BIRMINGHAM, SEPT. 18, 2012

 Concert Reviews  1 Response »
Sep 202012
 

(Andy Synn journeyed to Birmingham, UK, to take in The Womb To Waste Tour and wrote this review of the experience. Andy has also provided us with video of each band’s performance.)

So here’s the thing. Myself and my good buddy Tim (also of Bloodguard fame) decided, kind of at the last minute, to head to this show over in Birmingham (those who pussied out know who they are, but I won’t shame them by naming them…). Now Birmingham isn’t all that far from where we live, except in rush-hour, which pretty much doubles your travelling time. I’m telling you this to explain why we missed Cerebral Bore, who I know have a fair few fans on this site. As it stands, we got there just as they were starting their last song, so I took the chance to hit the empty bar and check out the merch stand, before finding a good spot to watch Revocation.

 

REVOCATION

Revocation being the only band I hadn’t had the pleasure of seeing live before, I wasn’t sure what to expect, particularly as the band’s insane fusion of day-glo techno thrash, proggy song-structures, and black/death hybrid heaviness is the sort of foolhardy mixing and matching that often leaves me cold in the live arena. Thank god then for the band’s boundless confidence and enthusiasm, which certainly helped each song come across as more than just a series of good ideas thrown together, every track delivering an array of heavy, head-banging riffs, wild, madcap drumming, and sizzling solo work, while jumping around all over the metal map. Continue reading »

TOURISM: NEW TOURS HEADLINED BY NACHTMYSTIUM, REVOCATION, AND DYING FETUS

 Metal News  7 Responses »
Sep 142012
 

One last post for this Friday, with a focus on recently announced U.S./Canada tours.

First, it was announced today that Nachtmystium will be headlining the Dawn Over the Ruins of America tour, which also includes Jarboe (featuring Baleyyg) and Canada’s Weapon. All of the dates have not yet been released, but the ones that have are after the jump. Also, although I know Jarboe used to be in Swans, that’s about the extent of my knowledge about her work, and I know zip about Baleyyg. So if anyone has any insights, leave a comment. Nachtmystium and Weapon, of course, are must-see bands for yours truly. (Thanks to Utmu and Vonlughlio for the tip about this one.)

Second, Boston’s mighty Revocation will be headlining a tour, and A Life Once Lost and KEN Mode will be along for that ride. I’ve almost lost count of how many times I’ve seen Revocation, because they tour like there’s no tomorrow, and every damned show has been killer. And if you saw tomorrow’s earlier post about ALOL, well, you know how I feel about them. KEN Mode is another band I am very interested in seeing. Those dates are also after the jump.

Third, Lambgoat is reporting that Dying Fetus will be touring late this year with Cattle Decapitation and Cerebral Bore in tow. There’s been no official announcement, but Lambgoat has ferreted out three venues where this line-up has been announced so far. I’ll just sum up my thoughts about this tour as follows: HELLS FUCKING YEAH! Continue reading »

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