Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Revocation domination


It shouldn’t be such a surprise that Revocation runs its metal all over the place. After all, this is a band that was as comfortable playing basement punk-rock shows in Allston as it was being part of the metal bills at O’Brien’s and Great Scott while coming up the ranks in Boston.
           
“I love the scene in Boston. Extreme bands and punk bands played together a lot,” says Dave Davidson, singer and guitarist for Revocation.
           
Since releasing “Chaos of Forms,” its second album for Relapse Records, Revocation has been on a roll leading up to its current tour with Six Feet Under and Dying Fetus. After that, Revocation is on a month-long trek with the Shockwave Fest headlined by Fear Factory.
           
The Six Feet Under tour hits the Palladium in Worcester on Sunday, June 10, as part of the daylong Worcester Death Fest. The show begins at 1 p.m. and features a slew of regional bands alongside Vattnet Viskar, Fit for an Autopsy, Revocation, Dying Fetus, Suffocation, and Six Feet Under.
           
Shock Wave is also at The Palladium, and happens July 25. That bill has Revocation playing with Fear Factory, Voivod, Cattle Decapitation, Misery Index, Havok, Dirge Within, Last Chance to Reason, and others.
           
“Our band is very diverse in terms of style. There are obvious elements of death and thrash, but we fit well playing with different kinds of bands,” Davidson says.
           
The band’s Relapse debut “Existence is Futile” showcased raw prowess, with Revocation layering technical gleam over death gloom while driving at a breakneck thrash speed.
           
But rather than replicate the effort that drew the band a mountain of praise, Revocation pushed itself on “Chaos of Forms.”  While the middle of the album holds to the band’s core values with the tunes “No Funeral,” "Fractal Entity” and "Chaos of Forms,” elsewhere the band stretches out. “Dissolution Ritual” slips a Latin groove into the middle of the song. And nobody could have predicted that Revocation would bring in horns and a Hammond organ, but that’s exactly what the band does on “The Watchers” _ and pulls it off.
           
“On each record we definitely want to sound like Revocation, but we also want to do something a little different,” Davidson says. “I think we keep common threads in our work, like using extreme vocals and making solo sections a big part of the songs.”
           
Adding second guitarist Dan Gargiulo to the lineup in 2010 beefed up the live show, says Davidson.
           
“Dan plays contrasting solos and brings a lot of layers and textures to the sound,” he says.

Davidson started the band with drummer Phil Dubois-Coyne and bassist Anthony Buda. Originally they went by Cryptic Warning, but changed names in 2006 once they firmed up a musical direction.

“When we were 17-year-olds, we saw Random Acts of Violence and knew that if we wanted to be in this scene we had to step up our game,” says Davidson. “That was definitely one of the bands out of Boston that was a big influence on us. We always said, ‘If we could just be as good as that band.’” 

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