After several years of hiatus, followed by a disbandment, Akercocke are back to making Satanic death metal again, with a new album 10 years after their last. The British band’s unique variety of blackened progressive death metal has had a cult following for years now. The stark contrast between their graceful garb and the musical imagery of the Trinity of Tits, Goats and Lucifer is reflected onto another plane with the contrast between the apparent surface level Satanism with the aforementioned Trinity and the articulate and intelligent lyrical themes found in their work. One after another, their releases failed to bend to the whims of trends and “scenes”. After the band disbanded in 2012, part of the group released two albums under the project Voices, which, while sonically shadowing Akercocke moved away from the Satanic imagery and themes. The band reassembled in 2016, played at Bloodstock and the rekindled hunger led to the latest release ‘Renaissance in Extremis’.
Akercocke picks up where they left off with ‘Antichrist’ – flopping about in the slime of sex and death, the pungence of rotten flesh and the fragrance of orgasmic fluids. Akercocke have always been capricious in nature when it comes to their display of extremity, without abandoning the overarching atmosphere that it creates, and the same can be seen with the new album. Hauntingly beautiful, clean sections shine amidst the blackness of the aggressive death metal. The frequent melodic guitar solos act as the antithesis to the atonal guitar work. Thematically, there is a complete departure from Satanism. The lyrics deal mostly with loss and despair, emptiness and helplessness, but on occasions, lyrics like “Achieve your ideal, become all you can be” and “Don’t give up the fight, From darkness comes light” brings to light an uplifting tone.
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There are sections where Akercocke displays their genius with ease. For example, the later part of the track “Familiar Ghosts” sees a gorgeous guitar solo ease into the strange, harsh singing vocals of Mendonça only to be released like wild dogs into intense and maddening blast beats that leaves you breathless. Some mellower sections, mostly in the later parts of the album, aren’t as captivating, although the tracks mix it up quite well to keep the listener engaged – solid dissonant riffs, clean prog rock sections and some occasional hammerings. The interplay of the three styles of vocals – deep growls, shouting growls that almost sound like singing, and the soft, clean singing vocals – is interesting, but I cannot stay non-preferential, I definitely prefer hearing more of the deeper growls. Not everyone will sit well with it though. Is the second half of the album featuring more softer sections the direction the band might take after this? Only time will tell. But hey, if there are more saxophones like in the final track “A Particularly Cold Sept”, it would be most welcome.
Bands like Akercocke don’t falter much. ‘Renaissance in Extremis’ has abundant content in its avant-garde and progressive shapes of death metal. For the fans of Akercocke, the album will be seen as another successful endeavour and they will gobble it up like all their previous releases. I would say that most of their experiments paid off. Here’s to more releases and experiments from this talented bunch.