What you have is 50% hardcore, and 50% death metal, with two members from the heavy as hell Eyes to the Sky, and then two from Jungle Rot/Cyanosis (drummer and guitarist were in both bands respectively). Whilst none of those bands are what you would deem spectacular, they are stout solid and have good songs, but more importantly they are of proper stock, in the sense that neither Eyes to the Sky nor Jungle Rot/Cyanosis are diluted entities, they are pure hardcore and pure death metal in equal measure.

Thus the initial notion is that with 4 musicians that understand and know what they want to play would become yet another luminary in the growing masses of brutal metallic hardcore worldwide. Unfortunately, rather than an intense intermingling of musical philosophies, Cause for Revelation keep it strictly simply, choosing to go for a muscular hardcore pounding with injections of mid 90s metal, and which on the whole, keeps the death metal influences rather restrained.

After a rousing, epic intro, which sounds like a Zulu uprising, it feels that that a seismic beatdown is about to hit, as the intro dies down “Nothing to Gain,” lurches forth, buzzing promisingly, with plenty of furious riffing and pounding double bass, and then with each passing second the momentum descends before the track fizzles out stoutly with no killer blow to close it out. The title track also suffers the same fate, taking shape promisingly with a fat NYHC/Roots-era Sepultura riff but again fails to capitalize on that momentum and again, begins to fizzle out as each second passes.

It isn’t until the eighth track “My Own Fate,” that a little more weight and force comes forth, emphasised further with the following crusher “Carry the Weight,” leading with some classic Hatebreed-flavoured chugs circa “Satisfaction is the Death of Desire.” Problem is that this is the album’s penultimate track before succumbing to a moody “Outro,” which closes the disc.

What’s most frustrating about this album is the potential it hints. Perhaps Cause for Revelation should have shorn the best moments and focused this release as a five or six track mini CD to give them a grounding, and then continued focusing and building their ideas. Coupled with this is the severely competitive environment they find themselves in, and not just from their homeland, bands from all over the world are creating brilliantly brutal metallic hardcore, meaning that in order to compete, all the core constituents have to be maximized to full effect.

Despite the negative aspects pointed out here there is plenty of promise here. If Cause for Revelation can take this album as a foundation and use it to build their next set of compositions together with taking full advantage of each member’s background, then they’ll be capable of crafting something more vicious, exhilarating and most importantly, memorable.

[Visit the band's website]

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