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Here's an album that is absolutely refusing to be pigeon-holed by arm-chair bloggers and critics alike, a giant fuck you to those of us who feel a compulsion to tie everything down with one of our genre packages—Sweden's
Reveal! are one of the rare groups impure and brazen enough to traverse a rarely contested musical swath of influences running the gamut of everything declared under the banner of "Extreme Metal".
Doppelherz is a colourful mosaic of sounds both old and new, borrowed and invented, frenetic and calculated.—Throughout its entirety, creaky cathedral chords reminiscent of
Negative Plane and
Funereal Presence can be heard, which is not entirely uncommon, but definitely dubious when it's pressed up against something that sounds like early speed/heavy metal a la
Mercyful Fate or
disoriented black metal and thrash riffs in the vein of
Obliteration or
Spirit Possession… But somehow these guys fucking pull it off with gusto!
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I'll spare the multitude of comparisons and say this, it feels like this record shouldn't work. Like there's a little too much going on and too many things being pulled and implemented for it to even feel cohesive, but there's just enough structure and swagger to make it work. And I'll be the first to admit, not having this album in my last years top albums of 2021 was an impermissible misstep, but as it usually goes with very late releases in the year, I overlooked and under-appreciated
Doppelherz when it dropped mid December.
Reveal! - Doppelherz (bandcamp)
