Revl9n LP review Walking Down The Heat
Revl9n, the Swedish Alternative indie band has just released their new LP Walking Down The Heat.
Revl9n - Walking Down the Heat
The ten track album opens with Night Vision a reverberation of guitar trampolines against the vocal which is so reminiscent of Feargal Sharkey as to be uncanny. I thought I was listening to Jimmy Boy, but I found myself moved away from Ulster to wide open fjords.
When Mercury Hits Red bounds out of the speakers with the expectant wagging of a tail and slobbering licks of a young puppy and how can the listener not become engaged with the infectious electro-beats.
Revl9n like to take the ears on a roller-coaster and from the highs we come to the depravity of exotic bass lines that hall-mark Some Medicine, with some chutzpah. I think this is the charge point for the album as it wallows in such emotional context.
Trip finds us in a triangulation of sounds, Bhangra, hits New York indie and rebounds against Swedish avant-garde. Whilst the head is working to keep up with the diversity of the release thus far, the body is in happy mode.
Walking Down The Heat marks the half-way point with a more mainstream sound of the world of indie-electronica rock. I am completely engrossed in the release which demands nothing of the audience other than an open mind. Revl9n has the ability to take your hand gently whilst jarring it with an electric shock to wake up the sensibilities. I am reminded of children’s electric palm buzzers.
Racking up a few BPM, Divine Wind flutters across the room as if wrapped in oily black smoke as the band tear apart all before them in a cataclysm of powerful chord constructs and a beguiling vocal.
KoKo is another shift of gear, which by now the head is anticipating, but like a decent Chinese grip return on the table-tennis table, once again the mind is wrong-footed. The review thus far, may appear to make the release sound discordant, but far from it. Walking Down the Heat is practically a ‘Day in the life of…’ which is never easy to replicate on release, but here sits well documented, each and every twist engraved with sharpness.
A Drifting Ship is classic Revl9n big rock guitar opening before the wrapping in spider silk. Yet another vocal to die for.
Despite the twee sounding title Bijou finds the band in gothic rock mode.
The final track Ch-ch-check It Out and Die is a delight of speaker exploding bass and percussion whilst the vocal shreds the tweeters.
Oh and how to pronounce the Revl9n - Revolution and for once I find the normally grating use of numbers and letters absolutely appropriate, I just wish this were a 20 track release.
Walking Down The Heat is available on 
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