Band:	Revenge
Album:	Infiltration.Downfall.Death
Style:	Black metal, Death metal
Release date:	February 2008

01. Death Heritage (Built Upon Sorrow)
02. Blood Noose (Hog-Tied Like Swine)
03. Sterilization (Procreation Denied)
04. By Force (The Only Option)
05. Barbed Anti (No Remorse)
06. Survival (The Absolute Truth)
07. Final Doctrine (Push Forward)
08. Cleansing Siege (Take Them Down)

Basically, when reading about Revenge all over the Internet, three key ideas keep coming back, which can be summed up like this: there’s not much to read about their history; Revenge is a very extreme band; Revenge is a very controversial band among metal fans – the famous “love or hate affair”. The first idea does not have much relevance in the context of a review. The other two are much more likely to be of interest.

Revenge are an extreme band, that at least is set. They are extreme because they had the brilliant idea to play brutal black metal with a raw production and very evil vocals. Since this is the concept behind, say, 90% of all the black metal bands that ever roamed the earth, they added a touch of grindcore, with all the blastbeats and fast groovy parts it implies. Not exactly a revolutionizing find, but originality is not the point of Revenge. Let’s face it, the sheer musical value of “Infiltration.Downfall.Death” is close to zero. This is actually more of the exact same thing they did on their previous releases (full-lengths and demos), i.e. chaotic black metal with evil screams, guitars engulfed by the omnipresent bass, random drums and an underground production. There is not an ounce of variation so it is actually quite hard to distinguish between the songs, and the musicianship is sometimes borderline out of tune. That’s for the content.

Now, it happens sometimes that subpar music is totally made up by the atmosphere it manages to create or by the mystery that surrounds the band themselves. And as I mentioned above, Revenge are apparently “love or hate” material, a band which stirs the most extreme emotions among metal fans. Frankly, I fail to see what is so controversial about this band. I mean, until someone steps up and eats a real live baby onstage, pretty much everything has been done already in terms of shocking people. So, yes, the music is very raw and very extreme, but it just does not reach a level or grimness above what truckloads of other, more competent black metal bands have achieved already. Ok, the overall atmosphere is very chaotic and very evil, but it is just not as mind-boggling as some less violent bands (Today Is The Day for instance). I agree, the lyrics are over the top, but a subject stops being controversial when everyone uses it, and once thousands of band state that they hate and want to horribly murder everything and every one, there’s not much room left for extremism.

In other words, and to wrap this all up, Revenge fail at being as extreme as they’d like you to think. For all its supposed intensity, it is not a very challenging listen, nor does it make the listener even slightly uneasy. Actually, the most salient emotion it awoke in me was “uhm, yeah, ok”, and then I got up and grabbed a soda. How people can be so moved by this band in either a positive or negative way is beyond me. Revenge are just another “war metal” band, average at best. This album could be of interest to some people who crave for chaotic, brutal music, but even to them I’d recommend, say, Crystalium or Axis Of Advance (with members of Revenge) over this one.