Black Revelation – Demon (Recommendation)

Once again I was looking for new entries at Metal-Archives, especially for German bands I might not know yet or by which I missed a new release. That’s the way I found out about Black Revelation, who released their debut album Demon last November. The band is a trio dedicated to Doom Metal of the first hour, where the dark sound was still shaped with a lot of Heavy Metal influences. Above all, the epic sound quickly convinced me and immersed me in this long fantasy novel set to melodramatic music. Fans of Pentagram, Candlemass or Saint Vitus will certainly find their connection here just as quickly and I am sure they will be able to enjoy Demon too.

With their magnificent old-sounding recording, it did not take long to get into the album and fully surrender to the following partly epic sounds. Especially the striking clean vocals stand out directly, which vary little over the album, but sound anthemic and powerful with various echo inserts and also fit perfectly to what you imagine when talking about Classic Heavy / Doom Metal. You quickly get the feeling that you have been summoned here to an epochal fantasy battle, which is sung about in its course in a rousing manner and is further whipped forward especially with massive instrumentals. In addition to their raw but catchy riffing, Black Revelation score there especially with genre usual, ever-building Metal melodies that can underpin the epic aspect of Demon again.

Although the tempo of the songs is clearly more in the Doom than in the classic Heavy Metal spheres, and therefore quite slow and dragging their circles, the sound is a bit monotonous only because of its partly overlong songs in various places . If the band kept their songs a little shorter, the whole package would therefore come across much crisper and ignite more in my opinion. Nevertheless, I bought Demon because it is still fun to deal with the sound thanks to the long playing time and there are exciting elements on each of the 5 tracks that are worth discovering. For a debut album and first record ever, this is complaining on a high level when regarding the remaining musical sophistication, because there will certainly be some listeners who will like exactly this overlength without considering it boring. Personally, I would have liked it a little more if Black Revelation had added a few more nasty Heavy Metal parts to the album in order to contrast the dragging passages at the same time and to create an even closer link to the wonderfully raw production.

The band itself still has a few copies of the high quality self-released double LP, which more than do justice to the long-player and also musically set it perfectly in scene. Black Revelation released a strong debut album with Demon and show that even today the sound of classic Doom Metal can still be played and conveyed authentically. If you look at how fast and especially how many records have gone away so far, the album seems to find appeal in today’s Metal community as well. The trio doesn’t really offer innovation or reinvent the genre here, but this record definitely offers a well-produced offshoot very much in the tradition of the first heroes and is thus a lot of fun even if a few of the songs are a bit long at all. For my taste, the Heavy Metal influences could be intensified in the future, but even so, Demon is a great debut with very good guitarwork and a thoroughly satisfying album for genre fans that can be listened to and played without hesitation.

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