Sex Nex Quod Odium

Now, Acheronian dirge has to be one of Colorado’s finest black metal bands. I mean, for this state there isn’t many notable black metal bands besides Nightbringer and Cobalt. I’m not really anti-DSBM but I do hate boring bands. Acheronian Dirge manages to be interesting whether playing fast or slow. Top notch black metal I do say.

Typically, there has to be a ton of tremolo riffs or else it wouldn’t be a solid black metal album. Acheronian Dirge basis most of the riffs off of tremolo stuff. Though, they don’t do anything wrong with it. The tremolo riffs are actually very interesting, and fast. I can headbang to this kind of stuff, which is always a plus. There are some slow, doomy atmospheric parts which is always cool, variation and all. ‘Memento Mori’ is the best example. It has this nice dark atmosphere to it, but picks up afterwards to keep you interested. The bass guitar has no effect in the music sadly. You can’t really hear it in the mix because it’s washed away by the guitar and drums. Speaking of drums, the drum work on this album is actually really good. The blast beats are varied by a ton of interesting fills. Most of which are fast and it just adds that extra ’oomph!’ to the songs. The vocal work is done quite nicely as well. There’s a ton of high pitched, raspy screaming. Their vocalist is incomparable at this moment for me. ‘Visions of an Ancient City’ is my favorite song for his vocals. There’s also some vocal work that’s closer to a death grunt, they come in every now and then to mix it up.

I’d also like to point out that Acheronian Dirge is very professional, clean, and intelligent. I’m really tired of overly poor produced full-length albums. If you’re releasing a full-length, shouldn’t it be as near perfect as you can get it? I mean, near perfect is very subjective but come on. I’m glad to hear that Acheronian Dirge took the time to go to a studio and put this out. I think the music would suffer without the production is has now. They sound quite nearly the same live, so they’re doing a great job. I can attest to this with first-hand experience. Well, back to the actual CD itself. Another thing I like it the lyrics. Very well written, you can tell some thought was put behind them. I’ll show you a tidbit:

‘As I finally fall,
my vision begins to fade
I close my eyes,
As my last breathe escapes’

As it may look generic when read without the song, it becomes much more intelligent mixed in the doomy atmosphere of the song. I hope you can see how I see it, again the track is called ‘Memento Mori’, the title track.

After hearing the debut full-length of Acheronian Dirge, I’ve become a solid fan of this band. Seeing them live helped set my feelings about the band in stone. If you’re looking for some orthodox black metal that’s primarily upbeat, in your face aggressive, then this is the band for you. I mean, titling your album in Latin, how could you go wrong?