Man oh man. How far can a band take their cheesy satanic image? Acheron, who've apparently been doing this since 1991, have pushed their image about as far as it could go before causing most death metal fans to puke and/or laugh hysterically. The next step is for the bandmates to record their final session in some kind of dungeon just before they're tortured and ritually killed (the resulting gore would, naturally, make the cover for their farewell CD).

Anyway, Acheron plays a very basic form of old-school death metal, at times reminiscent of old Death, except not as entertaining. Amazingly, Acheron's guitarist works in some technical solos now and then, and not just the squiggly wanking that one usually finds in death metal. The band does manage to play a number of different riffs in each song, and even at different tempos. But they do so without the slightest bit of raucuous energy you'd expect from a band with a really "loud" image.

As it stands, only four things caught my attention on this CD. The intro, because it has a lot of... um... I actually don't remember. Though it didn't have the same crappy repetitiveness of the rest of the CD, at least. "Golgotha's Truth" has an unintentionally funny spoken word intro bit about revealing the truth behind false gods or some such nonsense. The soloing always snaps my attention back to the music, since it's technical and fairly melodic. And... where was I? I've noticed that my review writing incorporates the feel of the music I'm reviewing, so this text is very listless and confused and "wandering around a lot without going anywhere," as an old man who used really tiresome non-expressions might say.

Oh! Right. The last thing that stood out to me was the final track. Stupidest... song... ever. It's nine minutes of a repeated high-pitched tone with a couple of ambient fillers and nothing else. Sounds bad, doesn't it? You think the idea doesn't work, put yourself in my shoes: I had to listen to it. And inevitably, that's my reaction to the CD as a whole. I had to listen to it. Acheron does nothing wrong musically, for their genre, but the result is more of a sleeping aid than anything else. Unless you sign your documents in blood and run over old ladies in your decked out VAN OF DOOM, look elsewhere for worthwhile music.

Track List:
1) CHAOS INVOCATION (Intro)
2) CHURCH OF ONE
3) XOMALY
4) BOW BEFORE ME
5) THE KINDRED
6) A LONG TIME AGO (Intro)
7) GOLGOTHA’S TRUTH
8) BETRAYED (A Broken Pact)
9) THE 9th GATE

Acheron is:
Vincent Crowley - vocals, bass
Michael Estes - guitars
Kyle Severn - drums and spoken voice

Acheron - Official Site:
http://www.acheron666.com/

Black Lotus:
http://www.black-lotus-recs.com/