Weapon - Embers and Revelations Review
by Matt Hensch
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This here band caused a bit of a stir after some sort of a legal issue regarding the Weapon moniker sprouted up between these Canucks and a legendary NWOBMH group with the same name, plus another Canadian group named Weaponthey like knifes and guns in Canada, apparently. In the end, the UK Weapon changed their name to Weapon UK, and this Weapon stayed Weapon, while the second Canadian Weapon became Weapon NL. Confused yet? Now, I'm not picking sides or implying one is right and the other wrong, but in fairness I think all Weapons should have added abbreviations for clarity, because if one has to do it, then why not all? So I've decided to continue the obvious separation one or more parties obviously wanted by calling this Weapon CAN Weapon to further divide them from the other Weapon(s); all can send me their gratitude anytime. CAN Weapon should technically be called Weapon CAN, but CAN Weapon sounds much more enthralling. I mean, can you actually picture someone using a can as a weapon? That's just silly.That leaves us with "Embers and Revelations," the third CAN Weapon album spawned from the recently opened Beefaroni container resting somewhere between Satan's bag of Cool Ranch Doritos and his collection of questionably wadded-up tissues. CAN Weapon struts along a fine fiber of blasphemous blackened death metal akin to God Dethroned or Belphegor that cuts and slices like a razor-sharp katana with intensity that cracks the heavens in two. What they do here isn't necessarily captivating, yet "Embers and Revelations" strikes with sternum-cracking force; it sounds evil, energized, malevolent and diabolical. There's little to complain about overall, because these dudes kick Chef Boyardee's ass. The extreme metal influences are poignantly clear through the riffing styles layered between melodies and sections often conjuring mental flares of Mayhem or Morbid Angel with some obvious cameos from one or more of the band's musical shareholders. This kind of thing is both impossible to screw up and insanely fragile: how simple is it to cram in riffs and patterns that reek of universally awesome bands, yet make everything appear more than a standard drone following the forefathers of extreme metal? Well, they manage to surprisingly pull off both technicalities in their favor, and that's why "Embers and Revelations" reaps what it sows, or should I say, remains perfectly symmetrical for all your canning needs. For starters, CAN Weapon does a phenomenal job altering the tempo of the album instead of just randomly charging in a blast-laden vortex of monotony which unfortunately sums up most of their musical equivalents; "Embers and Revelations" has plenty of that as expected, but there's an abundance of creepy, atmospheric parts that bring Immolation et al. to mind, certainly nothing I'm complaining about. That said, there's more than enough originality and clattering violence around the cult's altar. "The First Witnesses of Lucifer" bursts out in an explosive frenzy of monstrous riffs and blackened death metal destruction, an honest representation of most of the album, really. I find the last two numbers the finest simply because the slithering atmosphere of "Disavowing Each in Aum" is utterly sensational, and that ending theme "Shahenshah" isn't too shabby either. Any comment comparing CAN Weapon's remaining albums would be rendered useless because I'm foreign to their other releases, but I'm certainly impressed by their vigor and hostility here, and it has enough beef to arouse further curiosity. In sum, "Embers and Revelations" performs like an extreme metal record should ideally perform; it's remarkably hot yet intelligent and beyond the standards of its usual outputs. The average listener will find "Embers and Revelations" compelling based on its intensity alone, and I definitely suggest looking into the world of CAN Weapon if you've got the nerve to descend into this terrorizing storm of occult containers turned into items that one uses to inflict bodily harm with.
Weapon - Embers and Revelations Rating:8.5
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