Revenant burned bright in the very late ’80s and early ’90s, culminating with a single full-length album, Prophecies of a Dying World (1991), via German then-up ‘n’ comer Nuclear Blast. The group’s demos Beyond the Winds of Sorrow (1987), Asphyxiated Time (1988), and Demo 1990 (1990) were traded heavily in the underground. Death-thrash was a thing–think Sadus, Ripping Corpse, Atheist, and Hellwitch–but it wasn’t Revenant. They were unto their own. Six-minute songs (“Asphyxiated Time”), labyrinths of riffs (“Degenaration”), and some of the most vicious vox to come out of a human, punched holes in our collective rotted brains.
Revenant didn’t survive long after Nuclear Blast rejected the follow-up material to Prophecies of a Dying World. Call it short-sighted, a colossal error, or a shifting of times, though label still issued Rostok Vampires, Mortification, and other detritus like a factory on overdrive. They signed over to Ed Farshtey’s Rage Records for the Exalted Being EP (1992), but by that point, the writing was on the wall. The brightest flame, New Jersey’s most aggressive export of the day, was near its end. When the band said its final goodbye in ’94, the members splintered into various directions. Some continued with deathly metals–bassist Tim Scott found solace in HatePlow–while others pursued more secure careers–vocalist Henry Veggian went into academia–to keep life afloat. Revenant resurfaced briefly with the Overman EP (2002), self-releasing their change-of-style charge, a decade removed from wildman antics of Prophecies of a Dying World.
If there’s a famous saying about keeping quiet or letting silence prevail, it’s lost on Revenant. While original drummer Will Corcoran sadly passed in 2022, the embers of old, the allure of friendship, of clashing steel beams and complex equations was too hard to fully ignore. The New Jerseyans, now spread across the U.S. and Sweden, have reformed. Frontman Henry Veggian couldn’t let what defined his youth end up a memory–or a constant reminder–so he, thanks to Farshtey’s persistence, called up Scott and guitarist Dave Jengo to float the idea. They were in. As was Incantation and former Revenant guitarist John McEntee. Drummer Todd Gukelberger, of Prime Evil fame, was also added to the lineup, as was bassist Dave Neabore, of Mucky Pup and Season of the Dead, to fill in for Scott.
Decibel sat down on a Sunday afternoon with the reconstituted Revenant to talk history, respect, friendship, and that the newest iteration of the band isn’t nostalgia… it’s a look into the future.
Why does it make sense for Revenant to reappear now?
Henry Veggian: I was at a Cannibal Corpse show last year, and I was driving home. It was late at night. I was driving home from Charlotte and I just finally admitted to myself that I missed being in a band. I just missed the collaboration, the chemistry. I had been just ignoring that for a long time. I’m in a phase of life where I’m more about saying yes than saying no. So I picked up the phone, called a friend of mine down here, and asked him if he wanted to start jamming. He said yes. Then, about a month later, we [Revenant] got the offer to reunite. I started talking to everybody else in the band, and we all just decided it was finally time to give it a shot. For me at least, it was about embracing the possibility of music and my love for it again, which I was ignoring.
Dave Jengo: We actually had a couple of offers. And I think Henry had the biggest one that pushed him a little bit further in that direction. Do you want to elaborate on that, Henry? About Ed [Farshtey]?
Veggian: Dave and I both received offers for reunion shows separately. They happened around the same time. So, that brought Revenant to us—got us talking. At least for me, the one thing that I started to realize was that there was a whole generation of fans who had never heard us play. They know John. They know Tim [Scott], they know Todd [Gukelberger] from Prime Evil, they know Revenant’s music, but they’d never heard it live. Also, at the same Cannibal Corpse and Municipal Waste show, Fulci were opening. I was on the Waste tour bus, and Dave Witte opened the window and said, “Henry, those are the guys in Fulci—say hello!” He introduced us, and we just started speaking in Italian. Dave was like, “Who’s this guy?!” We had a long conversation; the hands are going. Basically, Italian people talking. I turn around, and [Erik] Rutan’s there scratching his head, “What happened to Hank?! How’d he become Italian?!” [Laughs]. There weren’t too many Italians—people who could speak the language—in the metal scene back in the day. So, I never spoke Italian around other people. Dave and Tim knew, though. [Laughs] Anyway, the Fulci guys knew about Revenant, all about the band. I was like, Wow, that’s pretty amazing. Then, I started thinking about other bands who had reached out to us. That was motivation too, I think. So when Ed, who’s an old friend, reached out, we were like, yeah.
John McEntee: It’s not easy to escape metal once you start it. He tried. It’s like a tractor beam. Held out for a while, but he couldn’t do it.
Veggian: Part of it also was like getting together with John [McEntee] and Charlie [Koryn] at their storage space and recording vocals [for “Circle (Eye of Ascension) VII”] for the Incantation record. I got to admit. I left there, and I was like, yeah, I kind of missed doing this. That put the bug back in me, too.
McEntee: It was just a weird situation because I just happened to move down here [to North Carolina] not knowing, really, not even thinking about Henry living in the ballpark. I know he lived down South. Probably even in North Carolina, but this was all like years ago. I just happened to realize he was local, and I was like, oh well, that’s pretty cool. For the Incantation thing, I just wanted group vocals with a couple of people. I thought, let’s have Hank do it. He’s part of where I came from musically. Jeff [Becerra] from Possessed is also on the record, ’cause he’s one of the legends that inspired me in the first place. It might not mean anything to other people; to me personally, it was an important little nod. I was able to give Hank a dose of metal, and it ended up. So, without knowing it, I nudged it a little bit without even really trying.
Veggian: Jengo was still living in California at the time. So, I think Jengo moving back East was also a part of this. It wasn’t just personal stuff that I was feeling. Some pieces had to start coming together—geographically.
McEntee: I just want to add that through my travels, obviously everyone knows I’m busy as fuck usually with Incantation touring and stuff. Every once in a while, either some promoter or just some fan or something will bring up Revenant. Or, bring up some version of some old Revenant thing for me to sign. I just knew that there were people interested in [Revenant], and I even had promoters ask if the band was ever going to do anything. I’d always say, “Ah, no, it’s not going to happen.” Well, here we are.
Henry made me swear over Parker & Otis lunch not to reveal to anyone—not even Decibel—that Revenant had reformed. He texted me out of the blue telling me he had something important to tell me, and that it couldn’t be over the phone. Whatever he was going to tell me had to be in person. I thought the worst, of course. It is, but in the best possible way.
Veggian: [Laughs] It’s true. I had to tell someone that wasn’t already in the band.
McEntee: [Laughs] Then, he asks me about Revenant. He says, “You wanna play some music?” I was like, “Of course!” I don’t know if it’s uncomfortable, but I always really let people know the importance of Revenant, about my evolution as a musician. Revenant was super-important to me at that time in my life. It’s something I’m proud of. Not getting the chance to play in Revenant later was a bit of a bummer, though me leaving Revenant gave me the career that I have now. So, it all worked out in a positive way. I get to play in Revenant again with these guys. It’s nostalgic, but it’s not.
Veggian: Did you know Dave and John were in a band together like in the mid-’80s before Revenant?
Jengo: I think I was barely driving, might have just been 17 or something like that. We were still working at the mall, weren’t we?
McEntee: I worked at Record Town. Jengo worked at KB Toys. The stores were right next door to one another. I remember he was a metalhead. I was a metalhead. Back then it was rare to see metalheads. I was into metal. He was into metal. So, I thought, I’ll just talk to him. It was about finding kindred spirits. We eventually formed the band, Hexes. I think we had the band for a year. Then, Jengo went to Parasyte for a bit.
Jengo: I was in Parasyte with Tim.
McEntee: I met Tim at Crazy Eddie’s. That was totally coincidental.
OK, let’s get back on track. Why was it important to have as much of the lineup intact, considering Will [Corcoran] had passed?
Veggian: When Ed approached me, he asked to get Dave and Tim involved. He asked whether they’d do it. Tim had long moved to Sweden. So, there’d be logistical things to take care of. Once I had Dave and Tim onboard, I said to Ed, “Why don’t I go all in and ask John?” I wasn’t playing guitar much anymore, so I needed a player. I’d rather front the band, be the singer. So, I had a couple of options. John asked for Todd to be involved. We had originally asked Brandon Thomas from Ripping Corpse, but he backed out after a bit. He had a new band and had some shoulder issues. So, that’s how Todd came into the fold.
McEntee: Actually, I think it was Sam Inzerra from Morpheus Descends right after Brandon. Sam brought up Todd. It was like, ding ding! It made total sense. I can’t imagine anyone else but Todd. Of course, Brandon would’ve ruled, but Todd’s our guy. He’s from the same era as us. He was in Prime Evil, the premier thrash band of the day. I was devastated Prime Evil never took off. I remember looking up to Prime Evil when I was in Revenant.
Veggian: OK, back to your question. We all bring in our unique histories. But we’re not a prisoner of the past. We’re not in this to sound “old.” We’re going to reinvent Revenant’s music. John has never played some of these songs. Todd obviously hasn’t. Dave, Tim, and I played all the music. So, the new guys are new parts of an old machine. The most important thing with this reunion is that we come to this with fresh ears. So, I’m really happy to have John, Dave, Tim, and Todd in the band. We talk a lot in text and email. The chemistry is real.
Tim Scott: Well, I’m in Sweden, the most far-flung of the members. I’m learning the songs here and there, playing along to the CDs. The songs are sitting in my backbone. I remember most of the riffs. Mostly correct. [Laughs] Dave sent me a video of how he’s playing the songs, so, in a way, we’re jamming online. But I plan on coming to the States soon to get the vibe going again with Dave.
No reservations, Tim? You could’ve said no.
Scott: I could have said no, but that wasn’t an option. [Laughs] In ’94, when we hung it up, I thought I’d never do this [Revenant] again. I moved down to Florida, lost contact with the guys. I’ve always been a bit of a pain. But I’ve always been nostalgic for Revenant. It was a huge part of my life. So, this is really cool that we’re getting together.
Veggian: After John, Tim’s the most active guy in metal. He was in HatePlow. He’s got Methane in Sweden. Dave Neabore, who’s been filling in and helping us rehearse, has been great. He’s in Mucky Pup and Season of the Dead. So, the only person who’s not been into this the whole time is me!
McEntee: [To Scott] It’s a long ride to practice. [Laughs]
Todd Gukelberger: I’m just thrilled to have the opportunity to play with these guys because we were all in the same scene together. There was real camaraderie amongst bands and everything back then. When Sam got in touch with me and said, “Hey, you know. Revenant’s getting back together,” I could only say yes.
So, it’s friends first, and everything else second?
Veggian: Yes, definitely. If it doesn’t work out or whatever, we all tried and we had a good time doing it. For a minute, I thought I had joined Manowar, John, instead of Revenant. I was going to dig out my old cod piece.
McEntee: We need to be shirtless, Henry. Manowar don’t have shirts. No shirts and furry boots. [Laughs]
Veggian: Oh man. We’re tribal elders now. More gray. I don’t think anyone wants to see us shirtless. [Laughs] Anyway, what we’ve done so far—which is to bring us together—has been amazing. We’ve all kind of been through the wringer, to put it mildly. I spent the last 25 years in academia, but I didn’t really ever leave [metal]. I’ve always been going to shows, singing on records. Doing stuff in the background. I have notebooks full of lyrics. I’m always thinking about songs. There’s a sense of unity with Revenant now. I’m loyal to the people and the music. Here’s the thing: Revenant never had an acrimonious split. Every single member of the band that’s played in Revenant is still friends. I still talk to John [Pratscher], our original bass player.
What were the first rehearsals like?
Jengo: Standing in that room together, with instruments in hand, getting ready to turn on the amps and start playing. What was that like? It felt just like old times, really. I mean, it was, it felt normal and natural. I was excited. I was so pumped to have this happen.
Veggian: I intentionally stood near Dave while we were playing and rehearsing the first time. Because when we used to rehearse, he was always to my right. I moved the microphone so that I could be facing him, and I could see him off to the side. He was in the corner of my field of vision, and that was familiar to me. Then, I’m looking at Todd, too, thinking, “OK, this is new.” It was weird. It was uncanny. It was familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. And I have to say, when we first kicked into “The Masks of God,” we’d all been practicing it separately, and we almost got through the entire song the first time we tried to play it. And when that happened, in my mind, I thought, “When we get Tim in here, and we get John in here, this is going to sound like a huge giant stomping over the planet.”
McEntee: It sounded so good.
Jengo: Not to mention, we were in a nice studio, too. Not my mother’s basement all cramped in there. [Laughs]
Gukelberger: I thought it was awesome. I really felt like we could do this, that this was going to happen because there was definitely some chemistry between us.
Veggian: My commitment is all about making it as big as possible in terms of the soundscape that we created in the studio that first time, Chris. It was an awesome feeling. It’s just going to keep getting better as more pieces come together.
What was the first song the band rehearsed?
Veggian: It was “Mask of God” from the Overman EP, which is a big, kind of heavy song. I remember when I was writing it back in the ’90s, I was going for something like Sepultura’s “Nomad.” That kind of lumbering sludge. It’s got a lot of space in it, unlike the other Revenant songs. To this day, one of my favorite songs of all time is “The Dawn of Megiddo.” I know most of what I wrote back in the day wasn’t that style, but there’s power in Celtic Frost. John’s into them, I think. [Laughs] Oh, speaking of John, we’re playing “Asphyxiated Time,” which was a song he was a part of when he was in Revenant early on. Dave and Tim were in the band, too. I’ve asked John to straighten out “Degeneration,” a song Incantation has covered. So, we’re covering all eras of the band and bringing, as Todd said, years of experience and wisdom. We’re tweaking things. We’ve always been tinkerers. That’s why Revenant songs are 6-7 minutes long. Dave would probably identify with this analogy. We’re putting the old motorcycle back together with some new parts.
Tell me about the reissues that are coming out.
Veggian: Todd helped with the transfer of some of the older demos. There are three reissue goals over the next few years. The first one is going to be the reissue of the collected demos, but as a complete set. There’s an unreleased Revenant demo from 1986 that is all instrumental—no one has ever heard it. I have the only copy. It was the original lineup: me, John, and a guy named Mike [McNeice], who played drums for us briefly and also played in Regurgitation on the first Regurgitation demo. That’s going to be included. Then, it’ll be all of the EPs and demos from the ’90s with Tim and Dave. And we were sitting on an unreleased demo of a song called “The New Paganism,” and that’s been remastered. That will be included too. So, this first reissue is going to be the complete Revenant demos from 1986 to 1994 with some previously unreleased music on it. The last time we did The Burning Ground, fans complained that it wasn’t the complete early demos with John. Part of that was just that the source material that I had wasn’t good. I had to find some older boxes and dig through them and get better-quality tapes, and Todd was part of that process in transferring those. We want to reissue Prophecies. We have the master tapes. They’re in our possession. We don’t have a plan for that just yet. Then, the other item is the Overman EP, which we released as a four-song CD, but there were actually two incomplete songs on there that we could actually go back in and finish and make it like a six-song EP if we wanted to do that. At least one label wants in on the reissues, but we’re not in a hurry because we’ve got a lot of moving parts here. It’s a new era. Tim’s been helping out getting the band online with digital stuff. But let me say this: we’re going to reissue this stuff, but I think the goal here isn’t to just go back and redo all the old stuff. We’re also open to whatever the future might bring. Dave has talked about his desire to write songs. As I said, I have a stack of notebooks of lyrics and stuff. We’re all creative guys.
Jengo: It’s camaraderie first, you know, and then figuring out what the business element of it is, meaning the releases and labels and all that fun stuff later.
So, reissues and then live shows, or the other way around?
Veggian: Ed’s festival [Rage of Armageddon] is first. And about that festival, I made specific requests to the promoter to get some younger bands I admire on the bill because I wanted to play with them, not in any weird, patronizing way. I wanted to have what John and Todd were saying earlier. The old scene was about bands getting along and being friends, like Prime Evil, Revenant, Incantation, Immolation, Ripping Corpse, and Suffocation. We all used to hang out and play shows together back in the day. It was a community of people. And I’m really excited to be part of that community again as a performing musician. And part of that means learning what’s out there with newer, younger bands.
McEntee: At the same time, we’re going to have some familiar faces at that show because the Ripping Corpse/Dim Mak guys are in a new band called Temple of Bones, and they’re going to play with us.
Veggian: Raven, I mean, come on.
Why is the Rage of Armageddon festival special to Revenant?
McEntee: It’s in Brooklyn. Ed’s one of us, from back in the day. When any of our bands needed help, he was the dude. He still is the dude. I knew that the Revenant thing was going in the right direction, so giving it to Ed, the first show, felt like the right thing to do. He would push us, too. It’s easy for a band to go with the biggest, highest-paying thing, but doing it the proper way is giving it to somebody who was there with us and was a part of the whole community of metal back then, like what I try to do with my fest [Carolina Chainsaw Massacre].
Veggian: Like John said, Ed was from the old school. He loves the music. He does everything for the music. He’s not a for-profit kind of guy. That’s not his motivation. He’s genuine, and I appreciate that.
Scott: It’s not a weird thing. Ed will do anything for the bands he believes in. He even took my little shitty thrash metal band out to Brooklyn once, booked us a couple of times, and got us on his Record of Armageddon compilation.
McEntee: That’s true. He supports the underground. He did a lot for the first seven-inch for Revenant back in the day. No, wait, that was the second seven-inch, Exalted Being [Rage Records].
Veggian: Ed was there for us when we had our falling out with Nuclear Blast. He said, “Hey, Nuclear Blast didn’t like that demo. Give it to me, and I’ll put it on my label.” We were labelmates with Prime Evil. Finally!
OK, so, let’s end this thing. Tell me again, who’s putting out the demo reissue and when is the next Rage of Armageddon?
Veggian: Xtreem, the same label that put out The Burning Ground, will get the demos. Not sure about Prophecies. We have offers. The other release is still too far out to think about, I think. The next Rage of Armageddon is August of next year. We’d better see you there, Chris!
Revisit Revenant on Facebook and YouTube. Visit Methane on Facebook. Visit Incantation on Facebook. Visit Rage of Armageddon festival on Facebook.
“Returned to my silent grave
Mute witness to our end
An oath it is that I now sing
The harmony of my suffering
I speak to those who shall forever be” – “Prophecy of a Dying World”
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