By Greg Pratt

Before checking out REVOCATION's Relapse debut, Existence Is Futile, I had one colleague spill his praises of the Boston-based band all over me (via email, luckily), and read another more or less trashing them in a respected magazine. So, I was curious to hear what the band was all about, to say the least.

And, wow, the disc is a handful and a half, cramming more than its fair share of musical ideas in its 47 minutes. It takes a lot to absorb, that much is for sure, but no one said being a metal fan is easy.

Combining technical death, thrash, black and straight-up old school trad metal, with a huge love of the almighty riff, this is a weighty disc, one which could get a bit more friendly with ye olde edit button, but one that shreds regardless and one that does have a surprising amount of cohesion to it despite its corporeal jigsore qualities. This isn't patchwork metal for patchwork's sake.

"We try to write songs that have a purpose and actually go somewhere," says guitarist-vocalist David Davidson (seriously). "So many bands cram as many riffs as possible into a song but it ends up not being memorable and doesn't grab the listener. Some of our riffs repeat and mutate as the songs progress so there are actual motifs and themes that help to tie a song together rather than just an amalgamation of riffs in the same tempo."

Agreed: tracks like 'Pestilence Reigns' are totally catchy and headbangable, owing as much to classic thrash as they do to modern death; elsewhere, 'Deathonomics' somehow finds middle ground between PANTERA and CRYPTIC SLAUGHTER. Strange stuff indeed.

"We have a lot of diverse influences," explains Davidson, "ranging from thrash, death, grind and black metal. We try to incorporate these influences into our songs in an organic way so it still sounds like us, not us trying to sound like someone else."

And while they sound, no doubt, 100% metal, lyrically they're 110% metal. Although my fave song title 'Across Forests' and Fjords' belongs to an instrumental, the rest of the album is rife with classic, iconic metal imagery.

"'Fjords' is an instrumental but the music conjures up images of Vikings and shit like that for us," says Davidson. "It's our nod to bands like Immortal. Lyrically we're pretty diverse. Themes on this album include betrayal, post nuclear holocaust and the collapse of our economic system."

End result of all this is a disc that is a pleasure to spin, the perfect, punchy production bringing out the band's love of all these styles with a polished sheen that only adds to the fun. And, man, can they ever shred. But like I say, I did read one pretty negative review of the disc, saying it was just too much of a mishmash of styles, too much going on. But the criticism rolls right off the good-natured Davidson.

"Maybe their brain was scrambled after they listened to [Existence Is Futile cut] 'The Brain Scramblers'? (laughs) I dunno; everyone's entitled to their own opinion and not everyone's gonna dig it but that's fine with us."