J-Man
Hailing from Athens, death metal quintet Resurgency offers a promising and enjoyable debut demo with Dark Revival. Though not shining in originality and uniqueness, calling this anything less than a strong effort would be cutting Resurgency short. What they've created here is a captivating, diverse, and irresistible death metal affair that happens to suffer from a few genre clichés. Dark Revival isn't something that will strike you in the head with its originality, but it offers an extremely promising start for Resurgency. Although the death metal scene is overflowing with acts like Resurgency, the talent of the musicians and quality of the compositions should guarantee a bright future for the band. Although Dark Revival is far from essential, it's a solid debut demo that should appeal to fans of the genre. In addition to that, the demo is available for a free legal download, so it's hard to not recommend giving it shot.
The music here is death metal played in an old school style. There are a few technical edges in the vein of Suffocation, but they aren't frequent. Most of the demo is a cross between Deicide, Death, Morbid Angel, and even a tad of early Edge of Sanity (Nothing but Death Remains-era). As such, this isn't a new concept, but Resurgency delivers the sound in a professional and respectable manner. At only 13 and a half minutes spread out through 4 songs, there isn't much room for filler. Every song delivers crushing death metal, and the closing track, "Outro (Atmosphere in Chaos)" is an interesting instrumental with nice use of synths. The musicians are great across the board, and I especially have to applaud the vocals from John P. Many underground death metal vocalists sound pretty uninspired and weak, but he has a commanding and powerful style that sounds wonderful to these ears. The instrumentalists collaborate as a tight-playing and precise unit that also sounds terrific. For a demo (or any release, for that matter), Dark Revival sounds great. It's hard to believe that it was self-produced. One of the best things about this release is the unquestionable quality of the delivery in general, which distances Resurgency from the crowd of mediocre underground death metal acts.
Although Dark Revival isn't something too out of the ordinary, it's an enjoyable death metal demo that deserves a solid 3 stars. Resurgency is undoubtedly a promising act - let's hope they have a label backing them for their future releases. Free legal downloads like this are easy to recommend because of the possibility of liking it, but if not, you haven't wasted any hard-earned cash. I have a feeling that most extreme metal fans will enjoy this one anyway, regardless of price tag.