ACHREN “The Forgotten King” (2011)

Line-Up:
Scott Anderson – Vocals, Guitar
Callum Kirk – Lead Guitar
Gordon Johnston – Drums
John Clark Paterson – Bass

“If you like, you can get my dvd of Saw and I Spit On Your Grave…”
“or if not, I’d be obligated to cut your throats and making out your intestines with my teeth..!”

This kindness is summing up the sweet impression that provides the listening to this first album of ACHREN, “The Forgotten King” (recorded in Scotland, mixed at Drop Hammer Studios in Finland by Matias Helle and mastered at Fascination Street Studios, Sweden by Jens Bogren), bellicose croc-magnon excavated in 2003 from Glasgow, calling their Thrash-Black metal with the sweet name of “Blood Metal” (the same one that Manowar did not dare), gambling with a perverse pleasure and feeding our hearing to be conducted sensitively by the recent House Of Lords or Reckless Love, a sweet cherry pie but not of the same cheese shop as vindictive scottish, and there, you really see the shock…

Therefore the abrasive (as a pelvic wax hair removal, imagine…), having the roots in the cellar, the THX for trisomies, black metal! (what else?) Then, nothing new under the Sun (or under the ceiling), it is brutal as possible, but God it is good! It emerges as spined-dry, leached, almost actively bleached and this total willingness to let speak the powder, with a production at the candle, in manners than the major Scandinavian brothers have dictated once… Not so basic Brutal, because each song hides treasures of intelligence with pulsanting and frenetic solo guitar (“Bastards on the Gallows”… or “Darkest Day”) with its battered skins that one would think it’s coming out of a dark German forest.

Black but Thrash, Thrash but Death, with a small twist vintage made in 80’s shittiest step (“Fuck It Hard” and the punk “Fury Of The Northmen”, amazing with its insistent gimmick and with these heavy deflagrations), it is crazy but not reduced to the first alarm at the first Immortal and Marduk, the feeling to live something rare and intense at the same time, this hair bristling on the skin and the fiercely smile…

The rest of the comments go without saying… it’s torpedo, it grooves as a fragmentation bomb, it’s preaching to the Sabbath, the Scottish malt. Terrorizer cuties can be jubilant, these Scottish reckless will make the difference. Hungry crabs of the planks with Morbid Angel, Dismember or Destruction, these suckers are impregnated elders and gently hoist but surely at the top of the poster (already available dvd, “Bloodstock Open air 2010 since January 2011”).

Direct and without frills, the album (or the chainsaw, it is you who decide) will cross you and your tip of breath, you’ll be certainly exhausted but full of the good old black metal of death. No doubt, not the surprise of the century (Shining is been there before), ACHREN is a band with exponential potential, uncontrollable virus, acceptable barbarism, whose motto could be “impaling for better reign.”

This metal have the taste of caustic soda.
Bad medicine but finally it is the only one I really need.

Reviewed by MEL DELACROIX