Now a decade into their career, Boston's technical thrash/death metal act Revocation have unleashed their sixth album of complex brutality, titled Great is Our Sin for Metal Blade Records. While for this writer 2014's Deathless was a bit of a letdown, Great is Our Sin sees the band pretty much back on track, delivering more of the potent metal we've come to expect from them over the years. Featuring some of the best song titles I've seen in ages ("Cleaving Giants of Ice"...I mean, how cool is that!?), the songs follow a similar pattern musically to past material, but thankfully it's those rampaging rhythms and scorching guitar riffs & leads that permeate much of what's on display here, and that's a good thing. "Theatre of Horror" and "Monolithic Ignorance" crush, but there's a melodic sense that is quite welcome so it's not relentless pummeling. There are still a tad too many clean vocal passages here, which we saw plenty of on Deathless, and it's not that I mind melodic vocals at all, but for some reason Revocation just don't do them well, so my advice would be to stick with the growls and gruff bellows as it suits their music better. Perfect example is on "Arbiters of the Apocalypse", an otherwise brute of a tune but tempered somewhat by uninspired moments of bland vocals. Fret not though folks, as there are plenty of fiery, technical barnburners here, such as "Communion", "Crumbling Imperium", and "Copernican Heresy", all of which sees David Davidson & Dan Gargiulo tearing it up on their guitars. Fans of their earlier, pure bludgeoning death metal attack will love "Only the Spineless Survive", and the aforementioned "Cleaving Giants of Ice" is easily the most progressive track here, with the band again veering off into Cynic territory, something they hinted at a bit on Deathless as well. Throw in a scorching cover of Slayer's classic "Altar of Sacrifice" and you have a pretty enjoyable platter of trashy death metal from this Boston horde.
Whether or not Revocation ever returns to the lofty heights of Chaos of Forms or Revocation remains to be seen, but Great is Our Sin is certainly a step in the right direction.
Track Listing
1) Arbiters of the Apocalypse
2) Theatre of Horror
3) Monolithic Ignorance
4) Crumbling Imperium
5) Communion
6) The Exaltation
7) Profanum Vulgus
8) Copernican Heresy
9) Only the Spineless Survive
10) Cleaving Giants of Ice
11) Altar of Sacrifice
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