Description

At first glance, Acheron seemed like your run-of-the-mill, early-'90s death metal band — no different from hundreds of others ripening like so many oranges under the Florida sunshine. But a closer look quickly revealed the group's altogether more sinister mission, one that reflected the devil-worshipping ways of leader and guitarist Vincent Crowley, who, in his spare time, helmed a Satanic youth group named ‘the Order of the Evil Eye’. Starting out in 1988, Crowley teamed up with his brother-in-darkness (and occasional electronic music composer) Peter Gilmore to disseminate his belief system using Acheron's brutal death metal music, which included a number of popular demos before the unleashing of their Rites of the Black Mass debut in 1991. Subsequent albums Satanic Victory (1993) and Lex Talionis (1995) followed in short order, each featuring a revolving cast of musicians supporting the core duo, and delivering competent, if hardly groundbreaking death/black metal. In fact, Crowley's anti-Christian views tended to gain him far more notoriety than his music, and around this time, he was appointed a priest in the Church of Satan by none other than its founder, the infamous Anton Szandor LaVey himself. Over the ensuing years, Crowley committed more time to debating local televangelists than writing music. Blackened records re-released the album ‘Lex Talionis’ and ‘Satanic Victory’ on one cd in 1995. These albums continues where the debut ‘Rites of the Black Mass’ left off. Once again Acheron presents straightforward, aggressive and pretty simple, yet very hard-hitting and effective Satanic old-school death metal. Just like on the debut, Acheron don’t use any blast beats at all here. This is a good choice for those of you who like death metal but don’t care for blast beats. This album is structured exactly like the debut: intro, metal track, intro, metal track and so on. Peter Gilmore once again composed the intros and they are mostly instrumental keyboard tracks, yet one intro also contains narration from Mr Gilmore himself. Vince’s vocals are angry growls, yet he never ventures into cookie monster territory. Many times you can understand the lyrics without reading them at the same time and Vince also sounds like he means what he says. The lyrics are very direct, no hard to understand metaphors used here! Mr Crowley simply rams his message down your throat totally unapologetically. The music alters between fast’n’ thrashy and slow’n’doomy. The songs often combine both these elements and it’s here that Acheron’s strength lies. As I said before, the music are pretty simple, this is definitely not technical death metal, easy to get into and the choruses are easy to remember. Acheron delivers with heaviness and conviction. Acheron plays a highly enjoyable old-school death metal with solos that bring in a traditional heavy metal feel. Acheron managed to carve out their own niche in the death metal scene, as their stuff is neither typically early 90s US or Swedish death metal. Track listing: 1. Legions Of Hatred 2. Enter Thy Coven 3. Slaughterisation For Satan 4. Voices Within 5. Purification Day 6. Inner Beasts 7. The Entity 8. I.N.R.I. (False Prophet) 9. Lex Talionis March (outro) 'Satanic Victory' 10. Unholy Praises 11. Seven Deadly Sins 12. Satanic Erotica 13. Prayer Of Hell 14. 666 15. God Is Dead