Sunday, December 27, 2009

Prevail

Before every sideways haircut kidlet at the mall got hip to Slaughter of the Soul and started a band with a really pretentious-sounding sentence name, there was a little group of high school buds from Martinez, California called Prevail. In the late '90s Prevail made some great demo tapes, played a few gigs at bars around weren't old enough to be in, and pretty soon they were drawing up to twelve or thirteen people at their shows. Shame really, these kids were way ahead of their time in looking to Sweden's past for inspiration. Prevail's farewell came in the form of this CD, oddly titled It Takes a Whole Lot Of Work, It Takes a Whole Lot of Time. As I mentioned before Prevail were sonically reminiscent of At The Gates and Dissection while looking more like the guys from your geometry class. A fantastic band that should be heard.

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14 comments:

  1. Voluspa9December 27, 2009 at 12:56 AM

    Holy crap! I remember getting this CD when I was working at Dark Horizon records. They were shopping it to the label and I wrote them an e-mail telling them that although I thought the music was good, the cover art was not very representative of the types of music the label put out. Kind of a dick move, but that was the mindset I was in. Wow, I never thought I would see this band again.

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  2. AesopDecember 27, 2009 at 1:00 AM

    The cover art is lazy at best, but what a great band they were.

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  3. Doktor Ross SewageDecember 27, 2009 at 9:56 AM

    Don't forget guitarist Andrew Labarre went on to bring some magic on one Impaled record, Mondo Medicale, and then a tragically ignored solo black metal record under the name of Altar the Sky. It's one of the best solo black metal records I've ever heard.

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  4. AesopDecember 27, 2009 at 10:10 AM

    Ah, Ross, this is what it takes to get you to comment here? I was going to mention the LaBarre/Impaled connection but I wasn't sure if he played on this Prevail release even though he is credited for the bulk of the songwriting. I never really got the Altar the Sky album, but maybe I need to give it another go. Lend it to me.

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  5. Petya VDecember 27, 2009 at 3:54 PM

    thank you for this

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  6. TLALOCDecember 28, 2009 at 9:26 AM

    Right from the first track, I was blown away.

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  7. AnonymousDecember 28, 2009 at 2:35 PM

    Thought this was going to be about the hardcore band from SC.

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  8. julius orangeDecember 28, 2009 at 2:36 PM

    this is great. thank you.

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  9. julius orangeDecember 28, 2009 at 2:37 PM

    This is great. Thank you.

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  10. Manfred GooseberryDecember 28, 2009 at 5:00 PM

    Don't judge an album by its cover. Love the guitars on this one and Swedish DM sounding vocals.

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  11. aronfredrikssonDecember 29, 2009 at 10:42 AM

    so good. thanks!!

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  12. Voluspa9December 30, 2009 at 12:50 AM

    I didn't judge the music. I thought it was quality Gothenberg worship. Listening to it again now, I can still say it is good metal, and was ahead of the curve of the onslaught of metalcore mediocrity that swept the U.S. soon after this was dropped. I personally was just looking for more aesthetically consistent art ideas when demos came through. That was just me though. Its not like Dark Horizon had released albums with mind blowing artwork!

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  13. cdbJanuary 11, 2010 at 12:33 PM

    Finally got around to checking this out, and holy shit.

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  14. Mark McCormickJanuary 16, 2011 at 9:00 AM

    You wouldn't believe how many times I've listened to this in the last year. Holy Shit!, indeed. Thanks!!

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