VISIGOTH — The Revenant King (review)

VISIGOTH — The Revenant King album cover Album · 2015 · Heavy Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
4/5 ·
adg211288
The Revenant King (2015) is the debut full-length studio album by US heavy metal act Visigoth. The band have previously put out both a demo and an EP, but The Revenant King is their first release for a label, Metal Blade Records. The album includes a cover of Manilla Road's Necropolis.

The music on The Revenant King is for the most part traditional heavy metal with a focus on crafting reasonably long tracks. The Manilla Road cover aside there's nothing here that doesn't hit at least the five minute mark, and most tracks go a bit further than that with the longest being the closer, From the Arcane Mists of Prophecy, at 9:44. The music is usually quite mid-paced but sometimes the band do put their feet down and hit power metal tempos. A notable example of this would be the song Blood Sacrifice, but there is some more upbeat but still traditional metal based material on offer here, such as the album's lead single, Dungeon Master. The Dungeons & Dragons themed lyrics of this one may be a bit too cheesy for some listeners but Visigoth's style isn't really for those who require their music to have a more serious tone all told. Elsewhere, though to a lesser extent, the band go in the opposite direction and hit doom metal territory, such as the end of Mammoth Rider.

While not the most instantly attention grabbing heavy metal album The Revenant King does open up with repeat listens. I think that here and there the band could stand to hone their song-writing craft a bit and shave a little bit off the running time of a few of the tracks in order to make them more cohesive, but in general this is a pretty damn good debut album from Visigoth. The vocalist Jake Rogers has a strong heavy metal voice that fits well with the band's rather old school style and if you want classic metal style riffs, then you've got them on this album in abundance. The band Argus are probably a valid comparison to make though much more doom metal based than Visigoth, but the singing styles of the two band's vocalists certainly warrants a comparison. The more galloping style rhythms obviously bring mind to Iron Maiden as well.

The Revenant King isn't the sort of album that blows me away but quality traditional metal can be quite hard to find, especially if the more modern bands out there aren't your cup of tea, and I think you could do far worse than picking this one up the next time you're out looking for a traditional metal fix. 4 stars.
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666sharon666 wrote:
more than 2 years ago
The Argus comparison is enough to get me to try this.

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