Resurection

When it comes to French black metal several names pop into your mind, aren't they? Alcest for the Post-heads, Blut aus Nord for the avant-garde/experimental and the atmospheric fraction, Mütiilation for the ambient black lovers and Peste Noire for the traditionalists and "elitists". 3rd Revelation are somewhat different from all of the aforementioned bands, sometimes for the better, but mostly for the worse of it. The band was formed in the last year of the 90s and released exactly one demo and that one wasn't even planned. They've spend all of the band's life writing on their debut and playing gigs, but the writing process took longer than expected and so they released the "Resurection" demo on their homepage as an "appetizer" and to at least release something to keep the fans hungry in some way. The album was never released and when their bassist Jo got sick, the band decided to split up for now. There were rumours about a comeback once Jo is back on track, but to this date, this hasn't happened. Not a big loss considering the quality of the material shown.

So much for the history, let's get to the musical part, if I want to or not and to be honest, their stuff covers way more than the dead guy on the cover implies. There is a lot going on here since the band tries to lift up their black metal with tons of different influences which makes me think that they were probably still on the search for a general sound. Their main influences (besides black metal of course) are death and thrash metal, but it lacks skill on almost all fronts. The band's main sound is straight forward 90s black metal with some eerie riffs, fuzzy guitars, rumbling blasts and cold shrieking vocals. Everything's recorded in the typical black metal demo quality, rumbling, fuzzy, full of statics and unbalanced as heck. That's probably caused by the fact that this was recorded in the band's rehearsal room which basically was the cellar of Alban's parent's house. The rumbling drums vary between solid blasts and slower rhythmic parts with lots of game breaking mistakes. Maybe he tried to be a little progressive there? Either way it sucks. The strings on the other hand offer some pretty good riffs here and there. The guitars mainly focus on 90s black metal riffs (who would've thought), but also add some pretty crispy thrash soli here and there, some pounding death metal influences and even groovy sparkles. But those really enjoyable sections are rare and stumbling across playing errors and the desperate try to find back into the song dominate the scene. The bass keeps track, even adds some fresh and heavy grumbling sprinkles and is often the most dominant instrument besides the drums. And that leads to the main issue I have with the guitars, they get buried under mediocre drumming way too often and the riffs simply can't enfold their magic. This makes the beginning of "666" with his groovy, bass and blast driven riffage, the slowly progressing guitar with soft drum intro of "Fred Heavy" and the following straight thrash riff the best parts of the release. "Fred Heavy" as a whole is actually by far the only "good" song on the release, covering all the influences of the band without tripping up on them, has reasonable changes within it with mostly fluent transitions and drums that aren't completely drowning everything else. Except the vocals, they never get drowned, even though the style might imply that, just kidding. They are performed pretty solid but just as amateurish as the rest of the demo. Cold shrieking dominates the vocal performances and I can't deny the fact that they sound a lot like the ones on the "Death Mountain" album of Xexyz (the Nintendo-themed black metal band) which always reminds me of a really angry Link swearing and ranting while searching for Zelda. Yet I have to admit that I kinda like it and the deep, ground-shaking growls are really good too. Only those pagan-like clean vocals in the middle of "The Dilemnia of the Dark Donation" are something I can't enjoy one bit. Too bad, too out of tone and especially out of place is the performance despite the powerful voice. Another example of the overload of influences they try and fail to implement in this demo. Not that they're not trying, it just isn't really working.

What's really sad is the fact that all of the musicians (maybe except for the drummer) show some serious potential and prove that they have tons of ideas that may or may not work. I even enjoyed most of the riffing and the dominant bass is something I always like to hear. They just can't show it on a regular basis, not regular enough to make an album worth listening to. I saw live-footage of them from around 2005 and they improved a lot, believe me, they could've made a solid debut if not more, but there sudden disappearance only leaves another long forgotten demo no one will or should ever care about and some glimpses of potential that gets buried under clumsy structures, amateurish performances and bad sound. And the Emperor cover at the end of it doesn't help a single bit, I wouldn't even know it was a cover of the legendary "I am the Black Wizards" if it wasn't written next to it on the band's homepage. If you're looking for the undergroundest of the underground, feel free to give it a spin, otherwise, don't do it.