There are two ways to interpret the slogan “Death to false metal!” When everything falls down to a sugary pro-love marmalade, toothless pop-rock and even death-metal receives the strange and careful definition “melodic”; someone should carry a shabby banner of real heaviness and aggression in music. Let’s look objectively. If you leave all the candy, plaintive-snotty nonsense behind and take a new dose of Revenge’s deafening brutality, sounding violence and ferocity of protogenic chaos - till your ears are ringing, till your stomach thrills, till the total blackout – you’ll understand, better to say, you’ll feel the meaning of this slogan.

The second release of this Canadian band follows and continues their debut Triumph. Genocide. Antichrist. from 2002. It opens with a song “Destiny Mastery” as if the musicians were pursued by all the evils of hell. This unbelievably integral album with 8 songs never misses a single second to whack you on your head with a fury of volcanic eruption. And it ends just like the suddenly stopped engines of a B747.

Inhuman voice – the tongue does not turn to name this roaring vocals – leads you to the mirror that shows the dark corners of your soul. You hear only what you can hear, depending on your perversity. Only several words sound like English, most of time it seems to be an aeon language of satanic rites and spells or something like that. With such a vocal manner even poems about flowers and sunny days will sound intimidating… The passionate and horrifying voice crushes everything even more than it needs because of the original production, especially in “Blood Annihilation” and “Doom Order”.

Moreover, without any extolling, I should say that Revenge are fortunate to have one of the best drummers, period, technical wise.

This guy will overplay the metronome! And the guitarists are faster than thought. Lead guitar shows the unique style, speed, special manner and… no melody.

Here we have come to the second part of our slogan. As I said, not everything’s simple with it. Metal, and any modification as a European born stranger (I mean music roots, inheritance), has a mark of these European roots in its blood. You can argue with me, of course, but the titans of Thrash and Death, inventing the most extreme styles and tunes, never forget about the melody. Tempo and rhythm are, and will always be, incredibly important elements, but without a melody in metal, even native, first-born rhythms from the very heart of Africa sound like, pardon, an already emptied bottle. Even the darkness isn’t empty; it’s a space full of shadows, if not, it’s a vacuum. The same thing here.

Without this little thing, wonderful, bewitching drumming sometimes becomes the sound of a sewing machine, the guitar howls as if someone is torturing the instrument (“Blood Annihilation” – why, oh, why?), a complex, logistic song structure turns into repetitive, indistinct riffs behind the drums, then it’s hard to distinguish tracks from each other. And it seems that we are examining the band’s speed…

If you want my opinion - yes, Revenge has some serious issues with melody, the best thing on the album in this case is “Victory Revenge”(fantastic riff!), but anyway it’s a wonderful recording, impressive as a group of full armed, electrified knights riding their madly racing horses coming to you; much better than all the recent power metal releases together.

PS. If you want to lose an irritating girlfriend, make her listen to this cd…