April 26, 2010

Reviewer: Chris

Baltimore’s Revelation has been kicking around the doom metal neighborhood for over twenty years, with an impressive line of releases to boot. The sixth full-length, For the Sake of No One, is the latest in a long, heavily saturated lineage of Sabbathy-type music. Yet again, we have a winner here.

As I recall the band’s 1995 epic …Yet so Far, I remember just how booming and capable the band is after so many years. For the Sake of No One picks up the steam where 2008’s Release left off, complete with brooding D-chord guitars and fantastic Steve Branagan drumming comparable to that of Bill Ward’s on the Volume 4 offering way back in ’72. Not to be left out of that mix is Bert Hall’s bass that supplies a perfect undertow to the chaotic waters of this album. With John Brenner handling guitar and vocal duties the trio makes for one of the better doom outfits this side of Pentagram.

The track “Offset” reminds me ever-slightly of Sabbath’s “Wheels of Confusion” in its tone if not its somewhat quick pace. This track has moments of welcomed sobriety in slower passages, allowing the music to literally breathe its way into your room. While I’ve said numerous times that doom is pretty stagnant in its style, a band can often make such limitations finely-crafted mini epics if they’re so carefully inclined. Revelation is the band not many people know of on the scale of Pentagram or Sabbath, but like fellow U.S. doomsters Hour of 13 the band should be heard and absorbed in one sitting, not to mention more well-known.

“Canyons” spills out over your speakers and onto the carpet as a syrupy offering that is both relaxing and heavy, causing subtle conflicts inside your head as to what you should be feeling or doing during its duration. It’s like lifting a heavy weight overhead using your knees to steady yourself as you push; it’s slow, heavy process can be amazingly beautiful if your mind is set just perfectly. In short, you can get utterly lost in the song and its trance-like movement.

Other exemplary tracks are “The Whisper Stream” and the title track, but as a whole the album is one heavy experience that makes me quite proud that while most of our countrymen screw up black metal and still wear silly corpse-paint, the doom genre is being cared for by bands like Revelation that can invoke both reflection and warmth inside some very weighty music.        

Release Date: November 17th, 2009
Label: Shadow Kingdom Records

TRACK LISTING

1.  A Matter of Days
2.  Offset
3.  Canyons
4.  On the Promontory
5.  The Whisper Stream
6.  Vigil
7.  For the Sake of No One

Total playing time: 45:39

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Revelation - For the Sake of No One