Review Summary: Flaw only in name
There's a particular YouTube video of a live "Do You Remember" from 2013 that I like to revisit. The band seems to be firing on all cylinders and pushing each other in an interesting direction. The catchy lizard brain riffs get augmented with a dose of layering and an alternate, catchier vocal line. The stars seem to be aligning, and after years of internal strife everything looks on track. However, the lightning never quite made it to the bottle as the classic line-up splintered before getting to the studio.
Revival has no spark to speak of. The fresh cohort of instrumentalists deliver a limp take on various covers, sounding like an overdriven equivalent of a campfire singalong. Volz is at his best when he has genuine emotion to channel, or at least a competent instrumental backing to feed off of, and there's extremely little of that here. "Broken" features some sensible clean arpeggios in the verse and an effective rearrangement of the chorus, but an incredibly phoned in extra main riff destroys any interest. The only other song of note is the Whitesnake rendition, as the band gets into a groove and Volz awakes a bit. Everything else blends together, apart from the groan when "Every Breath You Take" starts up. Even the renditions of classic Flaw tracks, a Cleopatra cover album staple, are hollow. New Flaw can't even play Flaw properly.
By now the band is Flaw only in name, and seems to be drifting further and further astray with each release. Back in the day I used to think they just got unlucky through various factors, but nobody forced them to do this. I think Volz is trying to make up for lost time, the years lost to the same strife that then made the reunion line-up fizzle out, but the end result just amplifies various questionable decision making. Add in happenings like the previous album being heavily plagiarised and Flaw is starting to look more like a schlemiel than the schlimazel I took them for. There's still a sliver of hope, as there are moments in the bookend tracks that are listenable, but at this point I wouldn't be betting for things working out in the future.
