Revocation - Chaos of Forms

October 28, 2011

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In classical Greek mythology, the goddess Athena was conceived and born in a method unusual even for the Greek pantheon. There are different versions, obviously, but the story generally goes something like this: Zeus, horny old man that he was, knocked up the goddess Metis and then decided that was a problem. Apparently the Fates had prophesied that Metis’ child would be more powerful than Zeus himself. Zeus freaked out and came to the brilliant conclusion that he needed to eat Metis to prevent her from giving birth. I guess Zeus never thought to just invent Plan Beta.

Fast forward however long it takes for a goddess to gestate, and Zeus got a migraine. He asked one of his buddies to whack him in the head with an axe to clear up the headache. Somebody obliged him, split his noggin open, and Athena jumped out, fully formed and ready to rumble. I’m sure this all surprised Zeus quite a bit, but he learned what mortal men already knew: get a girl pregnant, and a headache will result.

I can’t help but think that Revocation is some sort of technical thrash/death hybrid version of Athena. I remember finding Empire of the Obscene back on some random blogspot, throwing it on my iPod, climbing on the exercise bike, and not knowing what the hell had just happened to me 56 minutes later. The band just sprang into the world out of Father Metal’s forehead, riffs in hand and ready to thrash, and they’ve been releasing brilliant albums ever since. Yes, technically Cryptic Warning changed their name to Revocation, but the Cryptic Warning album wasn’t anywhere near as good as Empire. There must’ve been some power in that name change.

Chaos of Forms‘s core is the same style of hyper-technical thrash/death that Revocation have always played, but they’ve started to experiment a bit. There are some odd monotone clean vocals in “Conjuring the Cataclysm”. “Fractal Entity” features skronk riffs that sound like half-tempo Dillinger Escape Plan. The title track is typical Revocation- a tightly wound assault- but then at 1:58, the attack suddenly slows and blossoms into an expansive series of melodic guitar parts, and the rest of the song is an exercise in melodies unlike anything the band have used before. “The Watchers” offers up a blast of squalling horns and then a Hammond organ solo at 3:02 into the track. There was funk-thrash back in the day, but I don’t recall anybody trying something as off-the-wall as a Hammond solo. Experimentation included, Chaos is 12 tightly knit and brilliant songs.

I really can’t emphasize enough how impressive the playing is on this record. I’ve read a few concert reviews, and I do believe Revocation can pull this stuff off live, but on record it’s tough to know how much digital manipulation is involved these days. Given the ever-shrinking recording budgets that bands are saddled with, a little tweaking is fine, but there’s a line that shouldn’t be crossed. I would be sorely disappointed if Revocation crossed that line. It’d be like watching the women’s gymnastics in the Olympics and discovering that the gymnasts have hairy chests and sound like Barry White; we’d all feel cheated and just a bit disgusted.

I also can’t help but think that some members of heavy metal’s pantheon of gods all released at least three brilliant albums in a row to start their careers. Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Metallica, Opeth, and so forth. If Revocation jumped out of Father Metal’s forehead fully formed, and they’ve released three brilliant albums in a row, maybe they really are part of the pantheon of metal deities.

— Richard Street-Jammer

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HEAR CHAOS OF FORMS