Revocation are currently on a European tour with the mighty Cannibal Corpse, and have a new album Deathless out; and both the record and their live performances are garnishing plenty of well deserved praise. This hard-working band from the USA combine death metal, thrash and tech, and some great songs; and as Room Thirteen witnessed at the recent Damnation Festival, are capable of setting audiences alight with their incendiary live performances. We caught up with guitarist Dan Gargiulo at the Damnation Festival, before they went on stage and launched the audience into circle and mosh pit madness!
R13: How is the European tour going with Cannibal Corpse, and how was the gig at the Forum in London yesterday evening?
DG: The gig in London was awesome. That was probably one of the biggest shows so far. It's always cool going to London, because I guess we have somewhat of a following there. It's hard to tell because I am only there one time per year. But it seems like we have a growing fan base because last night was really killer! Cannibal Corpse are awesome. We are on a bus with them...super cool dudes, they are not like rock stars at all, very down to earth and nice guys. Obviously in the beginning I was a little star struck as I grew up listening to them, but when I got to know them as dudes, just super cool, a very laid back environment.
R13: What music are you listening to on the tour bus?
DG: George (Corpsegrinder from Cannibal Corpse) listens to a lot of country, a lot of Hank 3, Hank Junior, and the original Hank, Waylon Jennings, all the greats. We will have a bottle of whiskey and listen to country music. That's not what I would do at home, but I am having fun listening to it, it's cool.
R13: The new album 'Deathless' has garnished some great reviews, how do you see the musical evolution from 2013' s self titled 'Revocation' album?
DG: I think that the new album is sort of a continuation of the direction we have been heading in, and it's not to say we don't have thrash parts any more, we certainly do. It's a little bit less of that; we are focusing more on the catchy aspect of it. We are still technical, we are still fast, but there's more of an emphasis on making songs that are memorable and feel like songs, instead of just a mish mash of riffs that flow into one another. We want to make it seem like a song, there's a verse and a chorus, there's a bridge, there's some rock and roll influence there. We want people to be able to absorb it and at the same time we want metal fans to be able to absorb it. They go for two different things, people who listen to radio want something catchy, people who listen to metal want to be blown away by double bass and blast beats. We try to mix it together if possible.
R13: How have the new songs gone down live?
R13: The thing is we were playing the new songs before the album came out, so its hard to tell. A lot of times when you will play a new song that no-one knows, they will stand there and watch, and you might think they don't like it, but they will tell you at the merchandise table that they did like it. They seem to be going over well. Each song has its own vibe, some songs will have circle pits, some songs have a little more going on, on the fret board, and I find more people are watching. Some songs are very heavy and have big mosh pits, not necessarily a circle pit. Each song has its own vibe and I like seeing that in the audience.
R13: At the Glasgow gig in 2013, people perceivably reacted in different ways to each of the songs, which was great.
DG: Right and that's one of our goals as well on the record. We want to have a varied record, where each song has its own character, but at the same time still sounds like Revocation.
R13: On the previous album there were some interesting lyrical themes which, for example, offered a critique of the media, and tackled environmental themes like fracking. How would you characterise the lyrical themes on the new album?
DG: There is not an overarching theme, its not a concept album, but we tackle a variety of issues. There is a song about government surveillance, there is a song about war and drone warfare, and where that could possibly go in a doomsday scenario, sort of like a terminator vibe. Dave wrote a song about his personal experience in a hospital as a porter, pushing dead bodies around on carts. There's a song about the witch trials, it's about the Salem witch trials, which is a Massachusetts thing that happened, so Dave has some connection to that. I am from New York but I enjoyed the song.
R13: Is there any sense with that song that there are some modern day equivalents?
DG: I don't think that song is a metaphor, its not being brought into the modern day. It's just about what happened.
R13: The artwork on the new album is stunning and very evocative, how did the process work between you and Tom Strom in developing that?
DG: Dave had been getting tattooed by Tom for a long time and they are good friends, and we love his art and he is really talented. We left Relapse, who have their own in-house artist, who did all our CDs, so now we were looking for someone. Tom came to mind, and he was thrilled to do it. Basically Dave just told him the album was called Deathless, he might have given him the lyrics for some of the songs, and he said Beksiński. That's an artist we all love, and Tom also loves, and he was stoked to do something in that vein. He sent us a sketch and we were like totally, this is awesome. It was a quick process and we loved his work.
R13: You have joined the Metal Blade family, what is the experience like of establishing new relationships with a record label?
DG: Its cool. We haven't been with them for too long. We have met the people numerous times; every time we go through LA we will say hi to them. It's definitely a good crew, they have been doing good work for us. When we left Relapse it wasn't like any hard feelings, our contract was just up, and we are still friends with those guys too. Metal Blade has been doing great for us, we love them so far, no complaints at all.
R13: You are doing a big European tour, including London and Damnation. Do you think you will do a longer tour in the UK?
DG: We hope so, we have been doing support tours in Europe, because we want to break into the market here. When a different band is headlining they have the say where to tour. We don't really have that option just yet. But hopefully someday we can do a big headliner with many UK dates, which would-be cool, as we seem to do pretty well here. It seems like here, France and Spain are some of our better markets overseas.
R13: Things seem to have begun to develop around the technical death world, what's your sense of the direction around that.
DG: Personally I don't listen much to technical death. When I was a kid I loved Spawn of Possession and I still love them. I'm more into black metal now. Dave loves a lot of technical stuff. My finger's not really on the pulse of the technical world, and it seems like it is going in an extreme direction where bands are very over the top. I think that some bands like Archspire are good at it, and others that I won't name aren't really good at it. Even though I play in a band that's somewhat technical, when I get home it feels it is out of my system, and I want to listen to something else. I definitely think there is more of a market for it, which is why we try to make technical records catchy. I think now people are hearing so much extreme technical music, I think we can actually do that. Twenty years ago we might have sounded super technical, now we sound more subdued.
R13: With a track like Apex off the new album, it seems to have everything in it, all the different styles, and it really works.
DG: The point of that song was the opposite of what I said earlier, where I was saying we like to have concise song structures. That song was like, lets write riff after riff after riff, and as long as they flow lets just go for it. I think it came out really good. It took a couple of listens for me when I heard the demo, but after two or three listens it was like, I get it!
R13: It's a really great track.
DG: Thank you.
Here at Room Thirteen we would highly recommend you give the new Revocation album Deathless a serious listen, and crank up the volume until it shakes the walls....its the only way to truly understand how good this band is!