Revocation seem to be a band who have met with immediate success, forming in 2006, and already having released two albums previous to this, their latest. Revocation play a fast, furious brand of technical-thrash, which seems to succeed in being relatively catchy, despite the absolute maelstrom of things going on within most of the songs.
Before I listened to the album properly, I got the impression that it was the type of highly polished metal which goes down well with those of the stereotype who listen to Cradle of Filth, Dimmu Borgir and a disappointing shower of random overproduced deathcore acts who are, so these types proclaim "The heaviest bands on earth". Fortunately, this seems not to be the case, the band has quite a genuine feel after a while, even if it's polished to the point of being eye-wateringly shiny in places. The band have definitely earned the "technical" part of the genre that they have been thrown into, and a lot of the things which the band pull off, in terms of speed, agility on guitar, and making my own drum skills feel pitifully weak. The only factor about the sheer technicality which disappoints me is that, with the amount of wankery going on within every song, it's really hard to feel the music as a angry, headbang-inducing thing, when every moment of listening involves picking apart the couple of seconds of song which just whizzed past, and trying to work out which bit it was, and what comes next. Despite this, the album has a certain level of catchiness, not, of course, as high as a band which had such a trait as an objective, but enough to make the songs worthy of being re-visited.
While the guitar-tone, and to an extent the drums, are impressive, and in the case of the former, rather noteworthy, I found the vocals very underwhelming. A decent growl exists here and there, and there are some badass backing vocals (possibly synth) in tracks like "Conjuring the Cataclysm", a lot of the vocals sound rather generic, leaning towards an easy-peasy metalcore unimpressiveness, although they certainly do their job, and if you try to forget the connotations of metalcore that they bring, they're actually rather nice, especially when the vocalist differs from the normal-style, which, no doubt with thanks to the technical, blistering warpath the band seem to be on, is almost every song. All things considered, It's actually a refreshing change to listen to something which has been played and produced with a little polish and perfectionism, but despite loving my visit to the bands sound, I don't know if could live there.
It's good to listen to something shockingly energetic once in a while, and Revocation certainly ambush the listener with a syringe filled with adrenaline, and, coupled with the bands tight playing, I can't really criticise the album on any reasonable basis. It doesn't entirely do it for me, but it was one hell of a ride.
I happily give "Chaos of Forms" 7/10.
Links:
Revocation on Myspace
Revocation on Metal Archives
