When in 1992 Gore releases their 5th album ‘Lifelong Deadline’ its the 3rd restart in their 6 years career so far. And although this line-up with Bardo Koolen on drums and Johan van Reede on guitar is their most competitive line up it’s to late to revive the hype that started with ‘Hart Gore’ in 1986 but by now is inevitably jammed. In spite once again a favorable press ‘Lifelong Deadline’ fails commercially entirely, even more so because the band itself sees it as a complete failure.
What should have become Gore’s magnum opus turns out to be an over-produced, rudderless monstrosity, totally over the top, out of balance and with zero impact. That Gore maintains on the road with ‘Lifelong Deadline’ for over 3 years tearing down each and any stage they perform on is the only consolation and suspects how good the album actually could have been.
A suspicion that lingered quiet sometime before it got confirmed and the astonishment is equally large when guitarist Johan van Reede after having wanted to reconstruct ‘Lifelong Deadline’ for more than 25 years, starts in 2016 to unravel the tracks from under its production ballast and it turns out how vivid these songs still are.
Slowly the awareness kicks in Gore even might rehabilitate itself. In order to achieve a truly competitive album the band decides to bring Terry Date in to do the final mixes as well Howie Weinberg for the mastering. And so Gore’s ‘Lifelong Deadline’ transforms into Gore’s ‘Revanche’, (which is French for ‘break-even’, so not as in ‘revenge’).
´Revanche´ is not a 1:1 copy of ‘Lifelong Deadline’. Although the band initially considers to reproduce the 100-minute lasting 20 tracks in its entirely, this turns out to be impossible because quite some sounds and voices have disappeared, as if ready they simply took off. And luckily this also turns out to be the least interesting challenge, to reproduce ‘Lifelong Deadline’ in its original form wouldn’t add anything. The pandemonium was already made audible with the 1992 release, ‘Lifelong Deadline’ was really falling short in convincing on a purely musical level. And this is exactly what has been rectified with ‘Revanche’, that’s all what this is about.
In the 22 years since Gore stopped in 1996 there have been as many requests for a reunion as rejections. Reunions are usually meant to relive success-stories and with all the will in the world you can’t say that of Gore. For sure the albums and performances were without a doubt intense and groundbreaking, but it is also a fact the press tried to make more of the buzz then what the audience at the time actually needed. Let’s face it. Besides, when Walter Hoeijmakers of the notorious Roadburn Festival herd about the reissue of ‘Lifelong Deadline’ he offered Gore instantly a spot on its 2019 bill, with which after 20 years a Gore reunion is as of yet a fact.
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