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Image can do a lot of things for a band, and when I stumbled upon these guys sporting Dark Angel, Atheist, and Decrepit Birth t-shirts in a promo shot, my spider-sense began to tingle. Funnily enough those three bands are a fairly good indicator as to how Revocation sound, blending thrash metal nicely with technical death metal – the good kind of technical death metal too, the kind Atheist were pushing in the early 90's. The three band members are clearly very talented musicians and it really oozes through in their sound. Not one instrument overpowers the other, and while the production does sound fairly modern there's clarity between the vocals, guitars, drums, and bass that really benefits the sound. From time to time throughout the album the bass is brought up in the mix quite a bit, but it serves as no detriment, only enhancing the passage.

While these guys are technical, they never shove their technicality in your face unlike some of their peers and thus when a technical moment comes along it kicks your ass as opposed to ruining your mind. Throughout Existence Is Futile we see Revocation establish somewhat of a formula, with the majority of the tracks melding furious flurries of notes, both bass and guitar over blast beats, with thrash breaks and melodic lead guitar work. It's an awesome sound and the only major niggle are the vocals which are just a tad too trendy for my liking. Of course there are a few tracks that differentiate themselves, with the two instrumentals standing out as very interesting tracks. Particularly "Across Forests and Fjords" blending some awesome, almost power metal-style riffage into the madness.

Standout tracks would include the feral "Dismantle the Dictator", the thrash break in this track is responsible for a lot of neck pain on my behalf, not to mention the guitar solo being just shy of a stroke of genius. "The Tragedy of Modern Ages" is another standout, clocking at just over seven minutes this is the longest track on the album, and possibly the most exciting. Standing as the most progressive of the tracks on offer with some of the most melodic guitar work on the album – again mention has to go to the guitar solos as they are quite simply out of this world. Overall Existence Is Futile stands as a very enjoyable album, there is a noticeable increase in quality from around half way in but the first half is still quality. These guys are definitely a band to watch, I definitely think they have potential to do better, but for now fans of technical death/thrash metal can't really go wrong.