Review: Vader

Vader
“Revelations”
(Metal Blade)

Vader has been on the blasting doomified death metal scene for many long years but somehow their particular death metal path and mine had never crossed until the day of this fateful death metal album review of “Revelations”.  Due to the band’s name, I never really bothered taking them seriously believing they were simply an untalented flash in the pan, barely a blip on death metal radar.  It was hard to believe otherwise from what had to be a group of geeky enough Star Wars geeks to name their band “Vader,” right?  Nope, wrong.  They may be a group of Star Wars geeks, but in a certain non-fanatical light, so too am I.  Vader rages through their songs with a single-minded passion for the music that would benefit many lesser bands had they the same focus of mind.  This album digs at the roots of heavy hyper-paced death metal like a mangy crusty dog at a deeply embedded tick.  They exploit, mine and plunder such diverse bands as Terrorizer, Death and Sodom.  They strike out with the force of religious zealots attacking immorality, with the musical intensity of a kamikaze fighter, but it’s not all unwitting brutality for Vader, because like the character they draw their name sake from, there’s something else going on inside, oh, it’s not goodness I sense, but perhaps happiness.  Yes, that’s it, Vader’s wicked musical assaults aren’t the attacks of frowning longhaired metal boys, but of smiling, joyous metal men.
With longhair.