Review of Acheron - Tribute to the Devil's Music

There's nothing like a cover disc to get the buzz started on your band. When in doubt of your own songwriting skills, use someone else's! Acheron has released their cover album, A Tribute to the Devil's Music, featuring covers from the likes of Black Sabbath, Kreator, Celitc Frost, and even Bad Religion. To close out the album, they also cover themselves (okay, it's just a new song). The thing about most death metal covers is that they usually manage to suck out all the musicianship, artistry, and most importantly, the fun. While Acheron does a pretty good job of covering the legendary bands of the past, they still sound somewhat stale, and instead of being fun it ends up being somewhat dry and dull. It's more of a production issue here, though, because the musicianship is pretty spot-on. The flat guitar tones just don't do the original songs justice. There are other gripes besides production though, such as their cover of Judas Priest's "Devil's Child". They pretty much butchered this one, as the death metal vocals simply cannot compare in the least to [Rob] Halford's ear-piercing wail. It still had my foot tapping though, so it's not all bad, and the dual death vocals were okay at some points. Mostly, it was the refrain that was just awful. Their cover of Iron Maiden's "Wrathchild" was sort of lame as well. It seems like they missed a couple notes here and there. Finally, their cover of "Evil Dead" by Death has annoying keyboards. Most of the other covers are pretty well done, seeing as they're mostly thrash or early metal, and they do a nice cover of Kiss' "War Machine". Even their Bad Religion cover is interesting, and it's definitely weird to hear it in death metal form. If you like covers (and how could you not?), then you might get a kick out of this album. However, unless you're really a fan of Acheron (you do get a new song by them, but it's trying way too hard to be satanic), then I don't see too much value in the album unless you also happen to be a huge fan of every band on here. It's almost worth it for the final line of their Venom cover, which is "See you in hell you FUCKING BITCH". I guess if you have some extra dough lying around, go ahead and pick this one up, because covers are fun. Wrathchild

Don't Need Religion (Bad Religion) - Punk + Death metal = cool War Machine (KISS) - Kiss is pretty gay, but the cover is cool

Release Details

Acheron

Tribute to the Devil's Music

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