Revelation

Baltimore's Revelation trace their origins to 1986 as founding figures within Maryland's distinguished doom metal circle, a circle that also encompasses Iron Man, Unorthodox, Internal Void, and the Obsessed, the latter predating the others. Their initial years therefore remained largely underground, sustained by a connection to the Hellhound imprint—known as Rise Above on English shores—which spotted potential in the group's late-‘80s demo recordings and issued the debut album Salvation's Answer in 1991. Its stylistically consistent follow-up, Never Comes Silence, arrived the next year and illustrated a distinctly brooding, glacially paced yet tuneful strain of the genre, a purist sensibility realized by vocalist and guitarist John Brenner, bassist Josh Hart, and drummer Steve Branagan. When Brenner and Hart departed soon after, Branagan continued by enlisting vocalist/guitarist Dennis Cornelius and bassist Jim Hunter, whose contributions introduced a livelier compositional direction on the band's third album, …Yet So Far, released in 1995. That record garnered favorable notices and secured a European tour alongside Saint Vitus, yet the modest upturn proved insufficient to sustain the lineup. The following ten years yielded only occasional reunion performances, scattered demo sessions, and two archival collections amid extended periods of dormancy. Eventually the return of original member John Brenner and former bassist Bert Hall, Jr.—both of whom had already rejoined Branagan in Against Nature—led to the 2008 studio album Release and its swift successor, For the Sake of No One, issued in 2009. Around the same period a previously unreleased self-titled recording from 1988 surfaced, aligning with the newer works in revisiting the band's foundational doom approach and prompting further reissues via Shadow Kingdom Records.