Revenge - Victory.Intolerance.Mastery
Osmose Productions - OPCD 167 - 2005
By Philip Whitehouse
This is it. I think I've finally found my limit, as far as tolerance to extremity in metal goes. My enjoyment of utter, blasphemous hell-noise goes about this far, and no further. Revenge's second album Victory.Intolerance.Mastery is an unbelievably intense, teeth-rattlingly extreme journey into the depths of detuned, rumbling guitar torture, holocaust wind drumming and vocal venom-spitting that very, very nearly became so self-consciously extreme as to lose my interest altogether. However, a discernable attempt to produce identifiable structure and riffage saved this from being the noise-for-noise's-sake failure it so easily could have been.
The trudging, destructive doom-crush slotted neatly into the hateful blizzard that is 'Traitor Crucifixion'. The lightspeed, squailing string abuse that passes for soloing in each track. The brimstone avalanche drum rolls and subsonic growls that add a rumbling, subsonic grounding to each track on this release. All of these contribute to the unmatched atmosphere of malevolence that Revenge conjure. Rather than resorting to an underproduced hyperspeed wall of white noise a la Black Witchery, Revenge have managed to craft actual songs around their spite. Nasty, writhing, spiky, uncompromisingly crushing songs, yes, but still songs nonetheless.
'Atrocity March' occasionally spends a moment repeatedly smacking you over the head with stabs of syncopated guitar/drum/vocal bludgeoning before heading back to carpet-bombing you with blastbeats. 'Hate Oath's intro gradually stomps its way into view like a lumbering, cloven-hooved monstrosity before tearing the listener apart. In general, the album feels like an assault, and you come out of the listening experience battered, bruised - but, if you're anything like me, somehow wanting more. This definitely isn't for everyone, of course, but if you thought the likes of Watchmaker were extreme, prepare to have your idea of the word entirely redefined.
8/10
Official Osmose Productions Website
Osmose Productions - OPCD 167 - 2005
By Philip Whitehouse
This is it. I think I've finally found my limit, as far as tolerance to extremity in metal goes. My enjoyment of utter, blasphemous hell-noise goes about this far, and no further. Revenge's second album Victory.Intolerance.Mastery is an unbelievably intense, teeth-rattlingly extreme journey into the depths of detuned, rumbling guitar torture, holocaust wind drumming and vocal venom-spitting that very, very nearly became so self-consciously extreme as to lose my interest altogether. However, a discernable attempt to produce identifiable structure and riffage saved this from being the noise-for-noise's-sake failure it so easily could have been.
The trudging, destructive doom-crush slotted neatly into the hateful blizzard that is 'Traitor Crucifixion'. The lightspeed, squailing string abuse that passes for soloing in each track. The brimstone avalanche drum rolls and subsonic growls that add a rumbling, subsonic grounding to each track on this release. All of these contribute to the unmatched atmosphere of malevolence that Revenge conjure. Rather than resorting to an underproduced hyperspeed wall of white noise a la Black Witchery, Revenge have managed to craft actual songs around their spite. Nasty, writhing, spiky, uncompromisingly crushing songs, yes, but still songs nonetheless.
'Atrocity March' occasionally spends a moment repeatedly smacking you over the head with stabs of syncopated guitar/drum/vocal bludgeoning before heading back to carpet-bombing you with blastbeats. 'Hate Oath's intro gradually stomps its way into view like a lumbering, cloven-hooved monstrosity before tearing the listener apart. In general, the album feels like an assault, and you come out of the listening experience battered, bruised - but, if you're anything like me, somehow wanting more. This definitely isn't for everyone, of course, but if you thought the likes of Watchmaker were extreme, prepare to have your idea of the word entirely redefined.
8/10
Official Osmose Productions Website
