- Country: USA
- Style: Technical death metal / Progressive death metal
- Label: Metal Blade Records
- Release date: 28 September 2018
Dave Davidson called this one Revocation’s most death metal album to date, and for once the pre-release talk wasn’t hot air. The Outer Ones trades a fair chunk of the band’s thrashy bounce for something colder and more cavernous, with Lovecraft’s cosmic horror hanging over the lyrics, and the riffs follow suit. “Of Unworldly Origin” opens on a lurching, dissonant figure before snapping into a gallop that never quite lets you settle.
What keeps it from being just another tech-death flex is how much these songs breathe. The title track hangs its weirdest chord shapes on a groove you can actually nod to, “Blood Atonement” is all lurching menace and sudden blasting, and “Fathomless Catacombs” wanders into a jazzy, almost fusion-flavoured lead section without losing its footing. Ash Pearson is a monster throughout, switching feels so smoothly you only notice it on the third listen.
Zeuss’s production gives the guitars real weight without sanding off the detail, which matters when Davidson and Dan Gargiulo are stacking harmonies this dense. If anything drags, it’s the instrumental “Ex Nihilo”, which feels more like a breather than a song. The closing “A Starless Darkness” makes up for it, a slow burn that ends the record on its darkest note.
Best tracks:
Of Unworldly Origin
The Outer Ones
Fathomless Catacombs
A Starless Darkness
Author’s rating: 8.7/10
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