With New Gods, New Masters, Revocation have returned with an absolutely masterpiece. Rooted in the very real fear that technology is slowly leaching the humanity out of an already polarised world, it’s a dark album for a dark time.
We sat down with founding member David Davidson, who guided us through the changes within the band, the creation of the album, and the lyrical concept, in a wide-ranging conversation.
Join us in the dark world of New Gods, New Masters.
There has been some change within Revocation, you had Harry Lannon and Alex Weber come in and, without wishing to cast any shade on previous members, I guess it will have changed the dynamic within the band – how was it for you working on a new album with two new members?
Well, I mean, all the material was written already.
So, were they in a position to bring any of themselves to it, or were they told what to do?
I recorded all the guitars. Alex recorded the bass on the record, but the songs were already written. Certainly, Alex did a fantastic job of playing on the record. I think he played some really cool bass fills and stuff like that – where his personality could shine through. But, as far as actual songwriting is concerned, I had written everything before they came in.
How does the process go for you, do you demo everything at home and share it with the band?
Yeah, I demo everything out first and then share it.
Obviously, that approach feeds into your work with the guest stars on the album – you have Gilad Hekselmen, Jonny Davy, Travis Ryan, and Luc Lemay. In terms of working with artists who are guesting on the record, do you write with them in mind, or is that something that comes after the fact?
It’s kind of more after the fact. But, you know, I knew I wanted to have some different guests on the record and some of these guys were in the back of my mind while I was writing stuff for sure.
The instrumental piece with Gilad on it is kind of unique, how did you approach that with him?
I gave him the riff that he was going to solo over, and I just sent him that.
That must have been exciting when he brought his part back, because it’s pretty progressive, with jazz influences…
Yeah, it was amazing to hear his solo. I think he did just such an amazing job with the solo on the outro of that song. It’s very adventurous and it definitely has his signature style to it. Yeah, he definitely didn’t approach it like a metal guitar player would approach it.
In terms of developing the lyrics to the album, I understand that a lot of it nods to the growth and impact of AI on society, is that right?
Yes.
Within that, there’s one particular idea of society having a need to worship and, in your instance replacing idols with technology, which is an interesting update of Durkheim’s view that capital would replace idols. So, in terms of developing the lyrical thrust, did you have an idea about the distinction between commentary and taking too didactic a stance?
Well, I think when I write, there are things that could maybe be open to interpretation. There are things that are a bit more explicit. Sometimes it’s just my own musings on things when I’m wrestling with particular topics myself – and writing lyrics about them is my way of putting things into a frame of reference for me, or just trying to rationalise the crazy world that we live in. I guess I can kind of take it to extreme levels, right, playing in metal – letting the thought experiments get rather dark.
So, certainly, I think good art and good music serves to be, maybe, as a warning to society. Bertold Brecht said “art is not a mirror with which to reflect the world but a hammer with which to shape it”.
I always liked that quote.
Now, do I think a humble death metal record is going to change course for trillion-dollar companies? You know, it’s a nice thought, but I think the profit motive and incentive is a little bit too great for that. But, at the same time, I felt compelled to write it and I think it’s a conversation worth having, even if it ultimately falls on deaf ears, which so many things tend to do sometimes. At least I felt I was able to express my thoughts and opinions n the subject in a creative way that hopefully resonates with some people.
I think it speaks to a lot of discomfort that a lot of people and a lot of artists are feeling at the moment, because it’s something that encroaches so much on our territory. Have you had any direct experience of AI muscling in on what you do?
Yeah, I think it’s so ubiquitous now that it’s part of everybody’s life. If you use the internet at this point, it’s being powered by AI essentially. And, you know, look – as a technology, of course there are use cases where this is going to be very beneficial for individuals and for society as a whole. Just something benign like it helping to make your grocery list quicker. So, it’s a time saver for things that I don’t really want to do.
But the issue is that, when you let the genie out of the bottle, all of the unintended consequences occur. There are certain quotes out there that I feel like they’ve been out there forever, but I feel they ring true, and one of them is, “the road to hell is paved with good intentions”, right?
So, yeah, it’s a tool, it can make things cheaper and more convenient, maybe. But what are the unintended consequences? Like, with education, it’s a tool that could maybe help with research for your paper. But if you just let it write the paper for you, you probably didn’t learn anything, so you’re taking yourself out of the equation. My concern is that we’re going to automate ourselves out of our own autonomy.
So, in terms of developing the lyrics, did you have an entire theme in mind? Was there a loose concept, or did they come entirely after the music?
Well, it was both. I always write lyrics after the music is written, but I knew I wanted to write about the theme of AI, and I had so much to say about the topic that I knew it was going to be a concept record around the topic.
Did you already have the title, in mind?
It wasn’t like I thought about “I’m going to write about AI, here’s the title.” Rather, I had the concept of a technological dystopia – AI came up, and I was trying to think about initial ideas for the… or, you know, titles that could possible fit. Sarcophagi of the Soul was initially a possible album title, but it was kind of more of a narrow slice of what I wanted to talk about with this theme, so I ultimately decided against it. It was also a little bit longer, it didn’t quite have the same ring to it that New Gods, New Masters has. I was just playing about with a bunch of different things, like what is this AI technology? What are people treating it like? And I started writing lyrics and the concept for this pretty much shortly after the last album came out. I knew I wanted to talk about AI on a record, it’s very apropos now because it’s kind of everywhere, so we timed it pretty good [laughs].
But yeah, people are really sort of turning this technology into an idol and it’s like people are worshipping this like it’s going to be a new god and, as soon as I thought of that – those two words together: “new god”, they just seemed to fit together really well.
And I also love taking certain classic phrases and subverting them. We did that on the record Existence Is Futile, right? Normally the term is “resistance is futile”, but there’s still a sliver of hope in that, because you still have the will to resist something. Whereas Existence Is Futile is about as nihilistic as it can get!
And it’s the same with this one. “No Gods, No Masters”. It’s a very empowering slogan, it’s kind of a banner in the punk and metal scene – not letting anybody rule over you. But New Gods, New Masters, to me, has a very nihilistic and also cyclical feel, right? Like humanity is doomed to continuously go down the same paths and make the same mistakes, possibly just because it’s hardwired into our psyches. Maybe it’s an evolutionary flaw, or whatever.
One of the things that I always look for in records is the flow and, in terms of this record, it’s very dynamic from the very cinematic intro to the lengthy conclusion. When you were writing the lyrics, did they dictate in any way the shape of the album, or did you sequence entirely according to the music?
Yeah, when I’m writing… I think probably most people do this intentionally or unintentionally to some degree, but I really try to pay attention to it now that we’ve got multiple records under our belts – you can get better at your instrument through practice, of course; but you can also get better as a songwriter through the practice of writing songs and you can get better at crafting a record through the process of your entire career and knowing innately what should go where and what should space out the pacing of a record. So, I try to be very mindful of that.
I try to come up at the beginning with something very bombastic – something fast, or epic that will grab people’s attention. Of course, I want every song to grab people’s attention, but there’s different degrees of doing that and I knew, with the overarching concept of this record being pretty grand in scale, I wanted to end with an epic, longer song. But I was also thinking about the previous record. We ended with Re-Crucified on Netherheaven, and that was just a fast ripper all the way through where, normally, on the records before that, we ended with longer pieces. So, on Netherheaven I wanted to do something different and thrash the whole way through and then, on the new one, I wanted to go with something more epic and long. It certainly has its more ripping parts to it, but I wanted to feel more like we were taking the listener to the conclusion to this dystopian sci-fi journey that the new record represents.
Yeah, and I think that, particularly with tech-death, there is a danger that it can become too fast, too hard to the point that the listener almost becomes immune. So, when you slow things down and introduce dynamic, like you do on the title track, that ebb and flow keeps you hooked, and it means that when the album kicks you in the arse it does it really hard!
Yeah! And that’s very intentional. That was one of the last pieces to come together because I might have a general inkling as to what song I want to be first or last, but a lot of the material that’s happening – the meat of the record -it’s kind of hard to tell what song goes where until you hear the final product because sometimes a song that you think is going to turn out one way or feel a certain way, once the lyrics are in there and the solos and all the other elements are in there, all of a sudden you’re like “this song, I liked it, but now it’s one of my favourite tracks on the whole album”. So, there are so many fun processes that come along with making an album – everything from the first riff that’s written, to the song structure, to the lyric writing; even working with an artist to craft the album cover and coming up with the title – I love all that stuff but I guess it’s just one of those things where I can’t rush any part of that process. You just need to let it reveal itself to you as you go on.
One of the things I find really interesting now that we’ve got much better technology for recording and demoing stuff is that songs that you write, that seem terrible, you can drop them in a trash folder and then, ten years later, you come back to it and realise if you just change that riff or that lyric, it’s suddenly awesome! Do you find yourself doing that sort of thing, or do you write for the album and done?
I don’t like to cap my writing and if you looked at my riff folder right now, you’d probably find like 50 riffs for Revocation, and that’s not including the other projects that I write for. So, I’m kind of constantly writing, constantly coming up with ideas and, if something catches my ear and think it’s novel and it strikes a chord with me, for the lack of a better term, I record it. I know it won’t all make its way onto a record, but I’d rather have a surplus than a dearth of material.
Do you find yourself singing into a phone if you can’t get to a guitar quickly enough?
It doesn’t happen often, but actually the intro to Confines Of Infinity was written in that exact way. It was like a night walk or something like that, or I was coming home from somewhere, and the idea just popped into my head and I sang it into my phone!
I’m glad that’s not just me!
You kind of alluded to this a minute ago, but the artwork is really cool and I think, particularly for fans within the metal genre, artwork and packaging is so important – how involved do you get with the art? Do you give a detailed brief, or do you give them music and lyrics?
So, I worked with Paulo Girardi on the previous record and he did this record as well. I know that he likes a lot of detail to pull from. Paulo is so great to work with because he’s just such a fan of music and art and he’s an incredible talent, a real visionary. I know that he likes… the more I can give him, the more it inspires him, and I really get the sense that he reads everything too.
I get the impression that you sometimes send guys a long description and they maybe just skim it, but I’ve had the good fortune of working with a lot of amazing artists. Tom Strom as well – he’s a guy who takes it all and crafts a really cool image form that. So, yeah, I gave him all the lyrics, I told him the concept, I gave him a good long blurb, I sent him some of my favourite metal album covers and little pieces of artwork here and there as a mood board for inspiration. I even sent him a sketch, and I fucking suck at visual art. But he wanted a sketch, so I tried my best and he was so gracious that he said it was great. So, he turned my humble sketch into a masterpiece. You can actually see the sketch on Instagram; it’s been uploaded there. It’s pretty funny how crude it is and seeing the final product next to it, it’s like, “how did he take this stick figure and turn it into an oil painting worthy of a museum?”
I really enjoy that kind of collaborative aspect. Do you have the same sort of approach to videos?
Yeah, I love working with David and Alli and the whole My Good Eye team, they’ve done all of our music videos, all the way back to the Dismantle The Dictator video way back in the day. So, I’ve been able to develop a really strong bond with them, we’re close friends at this point. I feel so fortunate to be a part of the metal scene, because there are just so many interesting and talented people that are all kind of grinding away in their own creative ways. Yeah, it’s just brought me into the orbit of some truly fantastic and super-talented people.
To answer your question, I do bring my ideas to the table. I love working with My Good Eye because I can come up with these crazy concepts and they figure out a way to make it work, whether it’s hiring special effects people to put me into a tentacle suit, or just getting buckets of fake blood so, when I’m puking up my intestines on a shot, it looks particularly grotesque. So, yeah, shout out to those guys.
It’s the 20th anniversary of Revocation coming up, have you any plans?
Yeah, yeah! It’ll be 2026, because our first demo was 2006. I can’t believe it’s already been twenty years, and I wasn’t even aware of it until the label made mention of it coming up as a milestone, and I was like “holy shit, I’m getting old!”
But yes, right now the focus of course is releasing the new record, touring to support that. But, come next year, we’re in talks to do some touring and do like a proper, 20-year anniversary tour. Of course, we’ll play some stuff off the new record for that, but I’d like to take the opportunity to showcase our whole discography. And we’ll come up with some cool merch items, maybe some stuff that you can only get from us on the tour – just really make it like a celebration of Revocation and do something special.
