Antichrist

What a dreadfully boring band I thought as the first half-minute of ‘Summon the Antichrist’ had gone by. The repertoire of these brits seemed to be limited to hitting the drums real fast like some rabid monkey while repeating some monotonous death metal riff ceaselessly. And let’s not mention the vocalist who sounds like a throat-cancer patient croaking out his last few breaths. As these thoughts occupied my mind, making me angrier and angrier, another one (not so surprisingly) spread like panic inside my head: What the hell is an Akercocke, and how do I make it shut up? I was this close from never listening to Akercocke again.

Note my surprise when a swiftly played acoustic guitar made its presence known and the vocals switched from blackish rasps to clean in an instant. How… clever and progressive of them. The green, warm and approving light of “big brain music” went on inside my head. The atmosphere continued to thicken whilst my anger subsided, giving room for childish elation. For lack of a more eloquent description: this is pure magic!!! Akercocke wield this magic like an evil mage gone mad on every chance they get, and quite successfully too. ‘Axiom’ for example, is an exercise in how fast you can move from clean melody, death metal riffs, blast beats, black metal vocals, and back again! This willingness to switch styles in a heartbeat is essentially what makes Akercocke such a special band. I hope the band isn’t scared of heights, for they have climbed one big mountain with this release.

‘The Promise’ is the next surprise, starting with a creepy mesh of discordant guitars and some mood-setting narration. The song never gets going, but it doesn’t have to for it has already made its point. It works more like a preface for the mystical ‘My Apterous Angel’ - a song I would like to gift-wrap and send to Opeth with the text “Here’s how you do it, retards!” Akercocke remain confidently adventurous for the rest of the album and the second half is about as strong as the first. This is clearly some sort of black magic though because the lyrics seem to be about Satan or some other evil entity. Well, I couldn’t care less. I listen to metal because I’m a ferret (as we all know, ferrets are the most fanatic metal fans out there), and we certainly don’t worship Satan (we had a convention and deemed he was too much of a wuss). No, these brilliant compositions are all the sustenance this little critter could ask for for a long time to come.