Well, I am again “cursing” at the “cryptic” nature of this French act. I mean, ACOD is a fish by any other name but what does it mean? The adopted moniker does not seem to translate, initialise with anything in particular or even take the band members names (like say ABBA) into its lettering. It’s a damn trivial thing I know but it’s bugging the hell out of me and probably has no meaning in the slightest. All this aside, here we have a three track EP which follows up very quickly from last September’s, 5th album release (and 1st for LADLO) ‘Fourth Reign over Opacities and Beyond.’ A solid album it was too mixing elements of death, blackness and some symphonic parts too and no doubt getting the players a bit of further recognition.
‘The Hourglass Slave’ would make a good fantasy novel title and broods in with heft and ballast courtesy of rumbling drums and a vocal snarl which has a bit of a coarse Abbath delivery about it. There’s some synth smoothing the gap and its all quite rumbunctious not sounding too dissimilar from some recent work from the aforementioned toad-croaker and yes you could easily squeeze oranges in your bare hands to it. But to be fair it has a serious vibe about it, the bouncy passages easing down into a slower part complete with French spoken oration, differing from the English of singer Fred’s main verse. It’s powerful and with Jerome (Celestia) frantic composition really keeps you on your toes. Thudding in with groove and a pulverising drum workout ‘The Mask Of Fate’ gets down to business and has melody and vocals which are distinctly craggy. It’s a snappy and stompy number which gets in your head admirably, watch out for a mid-section of tinkling keyboards and pronounced bass run before you are back to slamming fist and banging head.
The title track is last and has a mournful atmospheric keyboard intro giving an epic flavour followed by much more pronounced orchestrations. It sounds pretty massive as the vocals join in and it gradually moves forward, this curse a somewhat doom laden one. With sudden thunderous surges, a piano keyboard run and a lady and gent mysteriously speaking in French. There’s plenty going on to keep your attention and it’s obvious this lot have lots of ideas which thankfully they manage to string together admirably.
I like this as I did the album before it. It leaves me hungry for more, wanting to know what I missed with the development over earlier releases but still with a certain sense of ambiguity. Something hard to maintain in this modern age. Hopefully I will build up some more from them in the future and ACOD will sit on the CD rack, possibly next to Abbath but definitely not Abba.
(7.5/10 Pete Woods)
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