apanthropy

Revelator
Light the Devil’s Fire
Nameless Grave Records
Release Date: 9/12/25

Rating: 84/100

“Revelator have produced an excellent debut effort full of character, pure riff crafting, and engaging songwriting. Light the Devil’s Fire deserves a place in the conversation of the best debut albums released in 2025, joining elite company from around the globe.“

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1 – The Numberless Mysteries of Nameless Entities
2 – Death Serenade
3 – By the Whip
4 – He Who Reveals Grand Wisdom
5 – Bapho-Maria
6 – Inside my Cryptic Chambers
7 – Lest Thee be Vexed
8 – We Who Reign with the Devil
9 – Perpetual Undeath
10 – Light the Devil’s Fire
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Hailing from Alberta, Canada, Revelator are a band that merge elements of death metal, black metal, and thrash metal into something truly more interesting than their base forms. Having formed in 2016, the band released a pair of demos – Revelator and Revelator II – in 2018 and 2019 respectively. Now, the band is preparing to lay down their first major strike in the form of their debut full-length, entitled Light the Devil’s Fire, set for release on September 12^th through Nameless Grave Records.

2025 has been a year of stunning debut albums from various bands throughout the global metal scene and Light the Devil’s Fire deserves to be part of that conversation. While never leaning too deeply into any one genre, the band manages to fuse multiple styles together to create an interesting strain of extreme music. The musical interactions between the two guitarists, The Iconoclastic and The Incantor, show a duo who are compositionally minded and don’t hide behind odd production properties, blinding speed, or even heavy amounts of distortion and gain. The riffs aren’t simply 3 or 4 chords and done, or cyclical tremolo-picked single-note melodies, but invoked extensions of the band’s delivery and atmosphere. Adding the rhythm section of The Heretic on drums and The Heathen on bass and you have a skillful demonstration of solid songwriting, entertaining compositions, and plenty of headbanging riffs and rhythmic executions.

Tracks such as ‘By the Whip’ and ‘We Who Reign with the Devil’ are razor-sharp slices of blackened thrash, capable of cutting to the bone with a barrage of riffs, excellent rhythm choices, and multi-faceted vocals. The footwork of The Heretic routinely produces excellent flourishes that really add character to the composition; d-beats, thrash beats, blast beats, and a limitless battery of fills and changes.

‘Death Serenade’ is a wellspring of riffs, with huge ringing chords fusing with serpentine single-note melody for the introduction before transitioning into a flurry of both dissonant grinding and melodic sensibilities.

Other songs such as ‘Bapho-Maria’ showcase a slower incarnation of the band, with a sinister melodic riff and equally unsettling minor harmonization to accent it leading the opening barrage. ‘Perpetual Undeath’ features some of the best riff interactions on all of Light the Devil’s Fire, which invoke an almost windswept and epic sensation.

Vocals range from a black thrash style delivery to primal gutturals. They do a great job of fitting the music and they are fairly nature as opposed to being overly theatrical or otherwise forced. Vocal patterns are well-placed and with plenty of overall restraint, not making themselves present to the point of annoyance and allowing plenty of space for the music to batter the listener.

The production is warm and clean, with excellent tonality on the guitars, and a very balanced mix that gives everything (including the bass) a place at the table. No instruments overpower one another and there is no frequency collision, just pure, rich, character out of each instrument.

Revelator have produced an excellent debut effort full of character, pure riff crafting, and engaging songwriting. Light the Devil’s Fire deserves a place in the conversation of the best debut albums released in 2025, joining elite company from around the globe. Fans of bands such as Aura Noir, Nifelheim, Hate, and God Dethroned should definitely make a point to check this one out.

Label: Nameless Grave Records
Band: Revelator

AJK