Showing posts with label Meshuggah. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Meshuggah. Show all posts

CD Review: Revocation – Deathless

CD Review: Revocation – Deathless
Metal Blade Records
All Access Rating: A

Revocation - Deathless 2014
Deathless is the album that's going to move Revocation to the top of the class as far as technical death metal is concerned.

New to the Metal Blade Records family, this being their first release for the label and fifth overall, Revocation – having toured with fellow death merchants Whitechapel and DevilDriver – has a lot of living yet to do, their dizzying chops, maniacal energy and frenzied diversity driving such crazed balls of thrash fury as "A Debt Owed to the Grave," "The Fix," and "Scorched Earth Policy."

And yet, this is a disciplined unit, moving together in lock-step, switching directions on a dime, adrenaline coursing through their riffs. Somehow they don't lose the plot in the twitchy, jazz-like complexity of a constantly sparking "United in Helotry," and when they decide to lay it on thick, as they do on the brutally heavy "Madness Opus," they make crushing bones an art form, even as wreaths of melody escape the carnage.

Surging, careening dynamics, fearsome vocals, horrifying lyrics and hammering, high-velocity drums make Deathless a gripping, visceral listen, guitarist/vocalist Dave Davidson leading this team of death-metal demolition experts through its paces and teaming with Dan Gargiulo on brief spells of beautifully intertwined twin-guitar leads that pay homage to Judas Priest or Iron Maiden.

Deathless is non-stop action, every song the aural equivalent of a sliced artery shooting forth well-sculpted sounds like geysers of blood and Revocation scrambling to save itself before it bleeds out. Even the building drama of "Apex" eventually explodes through speakers, as does the simmering, menacing "Witch Trials." This is volatile stuff, but Revocation, like other technical metal freaks Dillinger Escape Plan and Meshuggah, does not handle it with care. It shakes it up like a snow globe and lets the chips fall where they may.
– Peter Lindblad

CD Review: Cannibal Corpse – A Skeletal Domain

CD Review: Cannibal Corpse – A Skeletal Domain
Metal Blade Records
All Access Rating: A-

Cannibal Corpse - A Skeletal Domain 2014
Cannibal Corpse has crossed just about every line imaginable in its 26 gore-splattered years of existence.

So, when the band's new producer, Mark Lewis, says of the death-metal destroyers' new Metal Blade Records release, A Skeletal Domain, that "there are moments on this record that have never happened in musical history," he may not simply be engaging in wild hyperbole.

Lewis, who's worked with such heavy-hitters as DevilDriver and the Black Dahlia Murder, replaces Erik Rutan, who honed the sound of the band's last three records. Having updated Cannibal Corpse's extreme sonic assault, Lewis has somehow intensified their already enormous, swirling maelstrom of violent, blood-and-guts imagery, frenzied blast beats, George "Corpsegrinder" Fisher's guttural roar, Alex Webster's impossibly fast bass currents, psychotic tempo shifts and flaying riffs seemingly run through a wood chipper.

Executed with surgical attention to detail and a tortured mix of calculated instrumental discipline and crazed, completely unpredictable guitar attacks from Pat O'Brien and Rob Barrett, A Skeletal Domain is a uniquely brutal rampage of thrash energy. Unleashing a barrage of diabolical progressions that go places that would be off limits to less twisted imaginations, delirious blitzkriegs like "High Velocity Impact Splatter," "Icepick Lobotomy," "Sadistic Embodiment" and "Kill or Become" – "Corpsegrinder" raging, "Fire up the chainsaw" with homicidal intent – become scary aural loony bins, with complex stuff going on in the dark recesses that's truly shocking and unexpected.

There are interludes of heavy, slower crawls, such as those in the title track, that allow for brief respites from the all-out war Cannibal Corpse fights in the closer "Hollowed Bodies," where the chugging guitars grind bones into sawdust, just as they do in "Vector of Cruelty." Amid the malevolent chaos there is structure, and it's strong and flexible enough to withstand this wicked, destructive sonic turbulence.

Inevitably, most Cannibal Corpse conversation revolves around the ridiculously graphic nature of the band's iconic album covers and lyrics, the depictions of mutilation and dismemberment so outrageous they're almost cartoonish. The ferocious ambition and sheer audacity of A Skeletal Domain, suggestive of bands like Meshuggah, might just steer the discussion more toward Cannibal Corpse's technical skill and lethal precision.
– Peter Lindblad