Acheron: Tribute to the Devil's Music (2003)

The next three posts will cover albums by the long-running blackened death metal band Acheron.  Acheron is primarily the project of Vincent Crowley, who was once a reverend in Anton Lavey's Church of Satan.  The band started out in Tampa, Florida around the same time as the beginnings of the death metal scene, then later moved to Ohio, of all places.

This album, as could be surmised from the title, is a cover album.  Acheron is paying tribute to a number of their musical influences and it is also more of a compilation as the tracks were not all recorded at one time, but rather over the course of the band's history.  As such, the recording quality varies wildly, as does the musicianship.

Unfortunately, there is a little bit of an issue here that makes the covers concept a bit difficult for Acheron to pull off.  Acheron has never been the most dynamic of bands.  Their typical sound is more of a bludgeoning monster and is decidedly one-dimensional.  So when Acheron is covering songs from groups like Judas Priest ("Devil's Child"), KISS ("War Machine") and Iron Maiden ("Wrathchild"), they kind of fall flat.  It's not all bad, their covers of Celtic Frost ("Dawn of Meggido") and Kreator ("Flag of Hate") are pretty decent.

This is absolutely not an essential release among Acheron's discography.  Only hardcore fans will really appreciate this, and even then, I'm not so sure.