Dave Davidson is an incredibly talented artist. As the guitarist, vocalist and main songwriter for extreme metal band Revocation, Davidson is known for fusing unique songwriting elements and pushing the envelope to create music that is truly unique. Ahead of the release of Revocation’s upcoming album The Outer Ones, Metal Wani had the chance to talk with Davidson about the album, it’s intricate songwriting process, the difficulties in writing in a band that is geographically dispersed, H.P. Lovecraft, and how the band manages to create new records in small periods of time while managing their touring commitments.
The Outer Ones is a bold statement for Revocation, something which retains the essence of the band at its core, but incorporates newer elements that are a distinct evolution in the bands sound. When quizzed on how the band has matured their writing process on The Outer Ones over their earlier releases Davidson comments “We had the most revisions (on this record) than any than we have ever done just because we are advancing as musicians and want to hear some different things, so it’s like how do you maintain your core sound but do things different and after seven records it can be a challenge, but it’s a fun challenge”.
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While a Lovecraftian theme can be felt throughout the album, Davidson insists that it wasn’t a conscious choice to include it from the get-go “For me the music always comes first and it’s not until after the songs are done that I start to craft the lyrics, so Lovecraft’s work had a big influence on the lyrics, but I’m not sure how much of an impact it had on the songwriting process, because I didn’t really come up with this idea until a bunch of the songs were written”.
Geographically dispersed bands are becoming more commonplace due to the constant technological advances that continually emerge, and it’s something that each band that experiences and manages in their own unique way. When pressed on whether this is an issue for Revocation during their writing process, Davidson offered his own unique take on how Revocation manages this aspect of their work during the writing phase “I’ll start the writing process on my own, where I’m demoing out songs, collecting my riffs and I’ll envision everything in my mind first, so I’ll record the riffs, picture what the drums are going to be, what the bass is doing, maybe even picturing or hearing vocal lines, and I’ll play with that a bunch before sending it to Ash… but I’ll get it 85-90% fleshed out in my head before sending it out”
The conversation ends on the topic of upcoming tours, which Davidson advises that there are no further plans at the moment other than those dates which have already been announced, but notes that this was commonplace until the album was officially released and that offers started to pour in.