Akercocke

Goat of Mendes (Peaceville)
by Martin Popoff

The next brittle Brits in the box, Akercocke (means Satanic capuchin monkey, but they may as well call themselves Poppycrock; no one’s gonna remember it or spell it right), make Cradle of Filth look like Journey. The new one with a different Steve wanker at the mic. I suspect, however, that the band is just a side-side project for the fancy artists in Emperor. Akercocke sounds like a cross between Peccatum, Zyklon, and Emperor with a Suffocation-esque death metal chain wrapped around the axle, although the death on here is so basic, it sounds like Six Feet Under. And these guys are real deal Satanists, which comes across in the loopy, swirled art rock chaos to the thing, much of this exotic mess sounding like the soundtrack to that bloody Norwegian night where pretty much everything went wrong like the burial scene in Blood Simple. And I believe this is the only time somebody named their studio after their album, or vice versa. In any event, the mad professors make good use of it, coming up with all sorts of ungodly, unidentifiable sounds with which to fill the kitchen sink. I guess the theme is that Satanists come from all walks of life, even the ranks of industrial, prog and classical fans, or those who just like to hear ghostly female voices in SurroundSound.
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