Avulsed - Revenant Wars

AVULSED - Revenant Wars (UNHOLY PROPHECIES - 7"EP 2013)

Somewhere in Germany exists a small underground label, called Unholy Prophecies. I have most of their releases (I think there’s only one, which I am missing) and I must say that so far I was never disappointed with what they released. This particular 7”EP, which I am listening to now and trying to review is one of the biggest surprises from their release list, as it’s from the band, which I hugely underrate. I admit that Avulsed is one of those bands, which I constantly ignore. Back in the 90’s I may have had one CD of theirs (which was their most popular album I think, “Stabwound Orgasm”), which I actually quite liked, but later I also had one or two releases, including a truly crappy compilation “Reanimations”, which were not so good anymore, so I lost interest and started to ignore Avulsed a lot. For example they released “Ritual Zombi” album in 2013, but I didn’t even bother to check it out… I know that ignoring and such attitude is wrong, but damn… we live in times, when we have so many killer bands, so many killer releases you simply may have not enough time and not enough cash to get everything. So, if some bands disappointed me in the past or I did not like them so much then it’s obvious that I will not be interested.

Anyways, I would probably still not care about Avulsed, if Unholy Prophecies didn’t send me their newest release, which is “Revenant Wars” 7” single. And I am so glad they did, as it turns out that the music on this EP is simply awesome and it would be such a shame, if I never heard it! Yes! I do admit that Avulsed anno 2014 sounds insanely killer and much better than I expected. There are two songs on the EP and the one on side A, “Revenant Wars”, is simply awesome piece of old school death metal. The riffing in it is very strong; it’s great, aggressive stuff, with creepy, horror atmosphere, harsh vocals of Dave Rotten and powerful sound… kind of a mixture between Finnish, Swedish and maybe Dutch classic death metal, if that makes sense… But it sounds so damn good. It’s even slightly melodic here and there (so, this is why I mention also some Swedish influences), but generally the whole song sounds extremely pleasant and I am very positively surprised. Side B contains Nihilist’s cover, which is rather obvious and not so surprising choice, but it’s solid performance, maybe only the production is slightly too modern for such old demo songs like “Sentenced to Death” haha! You know, I’m used to hear this song with harsh, primitive sound! Haha, I’m joking of course, it’s nice cover, so … All in all, Avulsed turned out to be a great surprise for me and this song from side A is a real killer. So, now I have no choice, but to get “Ritual Zombi”, right? And you can bet that I will soon! I’ m very intrigued.

Final rate: 80/100