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REVOCATION
The Outer Ones

Metal Blade (2018)
Rating: 9/10

It’s going to be very difficult for me at the end of the year to pick my top ten album releases, but there’s a good chance that Revocation’s latest offering will be buried in there somewhere amongst the ashes, bone and flesh.

The Outer Ones is a staggering experience from start to finish. It’s also a record that showcases not just the band’s talent, but the levels by which other acts must aim for. Indeed, latest efforts by bands such as, say, UK stalwarts Cancer (Shadow Gripped), seem to pale miserably to such technical craftsmanship as Revocation unravels its release like a great tapestry of knowledge brim full of angular riffs, juddering drum patterns, spiking, jabbing bass grooves and those ominous vocal coughs.

In the early 90s a number of excellent bands heaped mazes of complexity upon our sizzled souls; Pestilence, Atheist, Nocturnus et al all opted for jazzed up contortions, cosmic dynamics and at times arrogant and inaccessible levels. Revocation takes me back to that time, but with extra weight and sneering which they haven’t sacrificed for intricacy. Yes, solos still meander wildly leaving us to reflect on such spirally fantasies, while those jabbing triggers of percussion remain at times unorthodox and hard to engage. But such is the overall meatiness and snarl of The Outer Ones that the listener can only marvel at such soundscapes.

Opener ‘Of Unworldly Origin’ sets up its stall as a rattling, pace-driven yet almost ungainly beast woven with feisty bass dribbles and those thrashing spitting riffs, all matched by the vocal growls and sneers. Such is the celestial rush of the track that it takes at least ten listens to fully appreciate the otherworldly designs offered up. But rather than existing as a tangled mess of slithering, squirming complications, everything makes sense with that hooky melody and Pestilence-styled mash up of thrash and death persuasion.

Meanwhile, the colossal, galactic slap of the title track gallops like a an eight-legged horse with its conniving threads, and its closing quarter is a wondrous expression of humanity as the combo provides muscular yet flexible waves of complexity. One may not find a better guitar duo in modern metal than Dave Davidson and Dan Gargiulo who, since 2010, has brought a new level of playing to the band and those solos are just majestic in their flight.

The intriguing tones of ‘That Which Consumes All Things’, the more reflective drum patterns of ‘Blood Atonement’, and the subtleties of instrumental ‘Ex Nihilo’ are symbolic of what Revocation is about now, because in spite of the damaging pace and scrambling leads, the band steeps into more philosophical, slower plateaus. ‘That Which Consumes All Things’ in particular is a fantastic technical expression telling the tale of an all engulfing cloud!

The melodic brutality of ‘Luciferous’ hints towards Morbid Angel; the twisted riffs remind me of vast rubber bands plucked and reverberating through the cosmos; unpredictable in nature, the combo worm in staggering fashion to create further Lovecraftian busyness. And that’s what I love about The Outer Ones – the band has that ability to take us into those giddy stratospheres and almost give us a false sense of security with those slower, thoughtful passages.

The thrashing-death combination works brilliantly throughout this moving opus which isn’t afraid to express itself with jazzed-up passages while always remaining heavy at its core. Ash Pearson’s percussion acts as a gargantuan wall, complemented by the stirring bass qualities of Brett Bamberger, and with the musical understanding of Davidson and Gargiulo The Outer Ones expands; the band methodically displaying its theories via ever-changing yet aggressive rhythms that twist, turn, slow and quicken as perfect examples of progressive death metal expression.

Neil Arnold

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