Revolted Masses - US Or Them

This is Greek progressive prog/death/thrash and they have been active for about five years now, this is their debut full length release. When a band has so many tags it often means they haven’t really sorted their sound out, or in fact they are so ground-breaking that you cannot describe the sub-genre. Unfortunately it’s neither for me! ‘Reason of Unreason’ will have a lot of you thinking mid-90’s Sepultura mixing it up with Skinlab and Machine Head, Yes it is all very late 90’s this release, although using a slightly middle eastern sound (like Melechesh, Nile etc etc) makes it a little more interesting than paying pure homage to a really poor period of music.

So brush away all prejudices and Revolted Masses do have a good sound, they have certainly captured it perfectly, the arrangements are rather thoughtful and tight, but I still cannot get past the thoughts of trying to establish where I have heard that riff or that melody before. The singer is rather powerful and very much like the US scene of late by delivering gruff and low end sonic abuse and is more than suited to the musical style.

‘Avdei Far'oh’ is steeped in Egyptian history, the pharaohs, the slaves revolt etc., but it makes it more interesting to hear this than merely hear songs about the act of death or butchering some young girl with all manner of ghastly devices etc. etc.  ‘686f72726f72’ is an instrumental that collects famous speeches and periods in history from Chamberlain’s announcement of war with Germany to Reagan telling Gorbachev  to tear down that wall…this leads nicely into ‘Tale of a Tortured Soul’ although I fail to see the former instrumental’s relevance as this track deals squarely with the Nazi Holocaust and the deathcamps. Revolted Masses are not afraid to touch on taboo subjects and base their lyrics on factual historical matters rather than individual interpretation, whilst I don’t believe this is a concept release, the subject matters encountered range from ancient history right up to the 9/11 attacks. Like I said earlier, it’s different.

‘US or Them’ musically is a little dated, but lyrically has more appeal. It’s good for what it is, but I don’t get a great sense of achievement after spinning this time after time, it has been done plenty of times before, but musically speaking I give credit to Revolted Masses talent for arranging strong tracks of some substance irrespective of the music style.