Ravage - The End of Tomorrow
End of Tomorrow? Middle of the 80s Would Be Closer
Ravage play heavy metal. Not 90s heavy metal where it all got sensitive, not 00s heavy metal where it got all ‘core. They play heavy metal as it was meant to be played. Duelling lead guitars, galloping bass work & plenty high pitched screams. They play 80s heavy metal.
The album starts out with a fast but generic instrumental track before kicking things up a gear or two with Reign Fall. Iced Earth style guitar work & some awesome lyrics make for an excellent opener. Vocally, Al Ravage has a sound of his own. Excellent mid-range stuff perfectly suited to the material but entirely capable of the prerequisite screams as demonstrated on The Shredder & The Nightmare’s Hold. They even find time to slip in a cover of Priest’s classic Nightcrawler *, but its location right in the middle of the album unfairly makes it seem like a linchpin placed there because someone wasn’t confident enough in the band’s own songwriting talents.
Much like fellow NWOBHM revivalists Cauldron, the biggest complaint you can make about Ravage is that they don’t really bring anything new to the table. However, when you’ve got guitar work this tight, songs that are as catchy as AIDS & the ultimate seal of metallic greatness (an Ed Repka album cover), you can’t go far wrong. Add into the mix, a vocalist who has a unique raw quality that stands out in a sea of clones and you’ve got all the ingredients for a classic metal album that will have heads banging and necks dying.
Trust me when I say this; If you like heavy metal, you are not going to be disappointed with this album.
* There are a couple of ‘metal’ critics who seem to be unaware that Nightcrawler is a cover of a Judas Priest song. Being a metal critic and being unaware of the Painkiller album is a crime punishable only by a slow painful fire-based death.
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