2gi pełnowymiarowy album Kanadyjczyków Victory .Intolerance.Mastery z roku 2004

V.I.M. was the first release I heard from Revenge (and my favorite of their releases). I received it in a bulk label-order I made a while back, and upon first listen was completely overwhelmed and unable to appreciate the mastery of this album. My first listen through left me feeling confused and unsatisfied, but years later this has ascended to becoming one of, if not, my favorite albums of all time.

When I play this album for friends and people who've never heard it, they are usually overwhelmed too and generally can't take the incessant blasting. For example, the opening track doesn't open up into something other than blasts until around three minutes in. Revenge is not for leisurely metal listeners, this band and particularly this album evoke an absolute negativity of which I've never heard come from an album as strongly and clearly as I do from V.I.M. You can't put this album in the background and expect to head bang carelessly, you really have to LISTEN and embrace the primal fury of this album. Once you listen to this band enough you can really appreciate the formula, I think its one of the most devastating of any active band I've ever heard. There's an obvious Blasphemy influence, but Revenge is nothing of a rip-off band; they incorporate a number of Blasphemy elements into their unique sound. Not only are the guitars noticeably heavier and filthier than anything in the genre, the pace is completely insane and unrivaled. Every song feels like an incomprehensible blast storm soaked in filthy, low down-tuned riff madness punctuated with super fast 6/8 mid-tempo parts that, upon their rare occurrence, are insanely aggravating (I mean this in the absolute most positive sense).

Probably my favorite part about this album (and this band in general) is that their base-tempo is the blast-beat. There is a ton of rhythmic diversity on the album, except instead of having a song based on one speed its more like every song based in blasts with various other parts attached within the blasting. Until I started listening to this (album especially) on speakers with a good sub woofer, I couldn't comprehend the song structures, which are all extremely well worked out. My neighbors probably hate me from listening to this album LOUD more times than I can count. Vocally (and percussively, truly incredible), Read is a madman (as anyone knows from listening to Conqueror), but his vocal skills are even more visible in Revenge and accented perfectly by Helmkamp's throaty lines. I really like the minimal usage of pitch-shifting too, very much reminiscent of old Carcass and particularly interesting in this context. I've watched videos of Revenge live and Helmkamp does all of the vocals. It doesn't sound quite like the albums but also sounds devastating (I've been a huge Angelcorpse fan for the last few years; Helmkamp is a great frontman, no dispute about that). I cannot wait for this band to hit a venue near me.

I'm obviously biased in my evaluation of this album because I love blast beats and I love low tuned guitars, but I think for anyone who can even appreciate these properties, this album is truly incredible. It's very hard to label this band, there is no one else who comes close to sounding this insane. If you like brutal, negative music, Victory.Intolerance.Mastery. by Revenge should easily fall in your top 10.