Revelations

The guys from Vader are dinosaurs of the European death metal scene and I just cannot believe this is only their fifth full length album since the band has been around for more than 10 years and that every year sees its own Vader release. In fact the band has released a lot of MCD and other stuff like that, which is great for their fans because I hate bands that release only one new full length album every two or three years. My first and only musical affair with Vader brings me back to 1992 when I was totally into the death metal scene. I remember their album The Ultimate Incantation having great reviews among top magazine and I was really excited about this release. Unfortunately I found the album very uninteresting and boring and thus never ever followed the band, but since I read a lot of magazines, I have always seen the name of Vader around.

The music has not evolved a lot if I compare this one with their aforementioned first album, but the production is so much better. Fast, aggressive and intense are sufficient adjectives to qualify the music. But although the music is really fast and aggressive, there is an excellent groove that emanates from this release, probably due to the great harmonic guitar work and the hardly perceptible variation in pace. Their stuff is however a bit too fast for my taste. The song Revelations Of Black Moses, which is the last song on this record and lasts more than seven minutes, is absolutely fabulous. It's a rather slow-paced song, and grooooovy as hell. I wish all the songs were of that ilk. If it were, I would quote this album more than ninety. Unfortunately, it's not. But it's definitely a must-have for people into fast and aggressive old school death-metal.

Before I end this review, there is something I would like to say about the different editions of this release. The band has recorded something like 15 tracks and only 9 made it to the regular edition. Different bonus tracks can be found on the European, the US, the Polish or the Japanese editions and probably on the Jupiter or Uranus edition. Someday you will have a band recording about two thousands songs, releasing a standard nine tracks album and every country on this planet will see a limited edition with its own bonus track. This sucks, because not everybody can afford two different editions (I know country where people still tape-trade because the can not even afford a regular CD edition) and not everybody can download mp3 (I bet some people in Europe have never ever turned a computer on in their entire life)…