Info
- Band(s): Revenge
- Label(s): Season of Mist Underground Activists
- Release Format(s): 12" vinyl, Cassette, CD
- Release Year: 2025
- Review Date: February 5, 2025
- Author(s): Black Mary
While the so called ‘War Metal’ scene if you will (most people connected to it claim there’s no such thing as a scene or even War Metal, as described later in this review) is not really evolving, it does present new artists every day. Most of them tend to be short lived and usually disband or cease to exist after a demo or a single release. Yet, there are several acts which have stood the pressure of time for several decades.
After the now already legendary Canadian band Conqueror split, the drummer James Read formed Revenge as what might seem to be the direct continuation of his work in Conqueror.
The short description on all the links leading to the stream of Revenge’s seventh studio album simply says ‘No Scene. No Brotherhood. No Remorse.’ which the mysterious figure of J. Read has been following on all of his endeavours. Since Revenge is basically his own personal outlet of aggression as he serves as the instrumentalist, vocalist, songwriter and lyricist on the bands recordings (he is accompanied by Vermin and Haasiophist who share the guitar, bass and vocal duties in live performances). The overwhelming concoction of Black and Death Metal infused with a huge portion of grind transcends the basic idea of this being music. This is aural terrorism.
Listening to this album in one take doesn’t give you much manoeuvring space as it can quickly seem this is basically a one big composition following you around the room. It takes several listens after which you slowly start to distinguish between individual songs, where you also realize there’s a method to this madness. Every song and each one of its parts is designed to stay on the incredibly thin line between art and madness. This schizophrenic approach is most evident in ‘Flashpoint Heretic (Flame Thrown)’ as the song literally bleeds into the ‘Strife Invocation’, which later, towards the end offers a slight marching intermezzo before jumping into the continuation of its initial path.
As noted earlier, the so-called scenes ‘evolve’ to fit in with the demands of the market and as such dilute themselves with the orders from big music conglomerates focused on profit. A small fraction of music artists (mostly from the most extreme genres of music) refuse to do so and play music which could be called anything but music by people falling for artists from the big conglomerates. In what we might call War Metal or Bestial Black Metal most bands revolve around the same group of people and cannot be really be called a scene. It’s just a bunch of people creating exactly how they think music should sound and challenging themselves to just be more (can’t really say more of what as it depends on every individual within this group of people). It certainly is ‘more’ in this case. More of everything which makes this side of Black Metal so appealing to people who crave violence.
If you’re just getting started with this band, don’t start here. As this is this band’s seventh outing, start with the first one and you’ll learn what this ‘more’ only the true legends among these artists challenge themselves to achieve.
Revenge
- Country: Canada
- Style: Death Metal, Black Metal
- Links: Facebook, Instagram, Bandcamp, Spotify
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Season of Mist Underground Activists
- Country: France
- Style: Black Metal, Thrash Metal, Death Metal
- Links: Facebook, Instagram, Bandcamp, Spotify, Youtube
