Extremity is, after all, our middle name and on this fledgling website we like to spread it about as much as possible. So a month and a half off the ground, I was wondering what was the most extreme band we had covered so far? Perhaps it was Cannibal Corpse, maybe Napalm Death but no matter how extreme you go there is always someone who is going to up the ante. This is very much true of the films that we are covering here as well, what on earth can come next? Well as far as music is concerned we are hitting a peak as there are few more extreme as Canadian warlords Revenge. ‘Scum Collapse Eradication’ is their fourth album and it follows other bestial three pronged album titles which pretty much lay waste to most the sounds one but the most hardy of extremist voyagers are likely to discover. ‘Too Extreme’ well Morbid Angel don’t make us laugh!

 

Not only do they strike as even more ferocious on the latest album but they have actually slimmed things down to a duo. Pete Helmkamp of Angelcorpse, Order From Chaos etc fame is no longer in the band and it is left down to J Read to provide drums and vocals and Vermin bass and guitars. The duo have plenty of other equally ferocious weapons in their present and past armoury though; Black Witchery, Blood Revolt and Conqueror amongst them so although in this format live they may have problems, on disc there is no evident compromise.

 

For some reason there is a minute forty seconds of silence, it could be my download from the label but I suspect it’s to catch you off guard because then opening number ‘Us And Them (High Power)’ batters in and makes an unholy racket. It sounds completely all over the place and undisciplined and will do to 99.9% of the population for the duration of the album but it does gel together for the rest of us once a certain familiarity breaks in. There are the normal sliding guitar riffs flailing up and down the scale and the furious pace never lets up. Read’s vocals are both gruff and high rasps, the latter of which would not be out of place on a grind album. The solo when it comes is completely undisciplined too, a welter of noise amidst a maelstrom of caustic, regressive instrumental abuse. The album consists of eight tracks and runs at 36 minutes, longer than some will no doubt be able to cope with. As far as I am concerned it’s a glorious endurance test and one with plenty of hidden depths about it. The vocals are particularly worth fixating on as there are some gloriously demonic tones with loads of reverb on them which truly make them sound like they are being spat out the foul bowels of hell.

 

Having seen the band live I am aware they can sound just so chaotic on stage but still it is nigh on impossible to envisage how they can forge such a horrendous sound as tracks like ‘Filth Solution (Intolerance).’ No one number in particular sticks out, everything comes at you with ravenous intent, its only aim to completely destroy. The hammer reverberating drum noise on the likes of ‘Banner Degradation (Exile Or Death)’ honed around guttural grunts do stand out though and are just more strange effects crawling hellaciously out from the void.

 

Obviously this is not an album for everyone and one that you won’t exactly be able to put on when you are all happy and looking for something fluffy and jolly. However if you are looking for something particularly grim and unrelenting, the soundtrack to a full on massacre perhaps you won’t find a sound much more genocide driven than this. As the final bombast of ‘Scorned Detractor (Trust No One)’ abruptly ends all that is left is the silence, deafening reverb left in its wake.

(7/10 Pete Woods)