Although Norway has long since ceased to be the epicenter of the black metal chapel, excellent creatures of the night still proliferate in its entrails. Acârash is certainly one of them. Formed in 2016, author two years later of the promising "In Chaos Becrowned", the trio presents itself on paper as the artisan of a black metal cracked by doomy wounds.
In fact, there is still a lot of Satyricon "Now, Diabolical" era in it which is not serious but indicates that the band is not that different from its elders. One only has to listen to the beginning of "Descend To Purity" to measure how great is the tribute it owes to Frost and Satyr. These sizzling guitars, this percussive pulse, these slightly cranky vocals and these leaded if not catchy tempos that make you want to stamp your feet are not unknown to us but always make their effect.
It is therefore a black art that is a priori classic, both in form and substance, which stretches its sinister mist once the first bars of this second album are spit out. If he was content to walk through the icy vault of a nocturnal black doom, it would already be enough for our masochistic pleasure. For in this morbid register, which winds through the cold earth of a forest with gloomy summits, Acârash is often imperial ('Goat, Skull, Ritual Circle'). The attentive defloration of "Descend To Purity" nevertheless reveals an opus more devious than it seems because it is teeming with details that disturb the image we had of it at first sight.
Certainly sporting catchy curves, witness this 'Satanic Obsession' that Satyricon would not have disavowed again, the work is not less gnawed from the inside by a typically hard rock style, just like 'Red Stone Betrayal' illuminated by a devastating solo by Lukas Paulsen. Heavier than Black, 'Steel Hunter' reminds us in turn that Acârash is above all the mode of expression of musicians free of any label. The way the four-stringed guitar slams ('Desecrate, Liberate', also victim of the guitarist's rock'n'roll bites) and this taste for twisted lines ('Below Ceremonial' or 'Three Knives Cold' and their sinuous reliefs with multiple crevices) confirm it.
With "Descend To Purity", the Norwegian trio not only transforms the try, they affirm their appetite for granitic black metal, nevertheless permeable to a groove inherited from hard rock, without sacrificing anything in frozen atmospheres or occult dimensions. In doing so, Acârash validates the promises aroused by his first opus and imposes himself among the last and most interesting offspring from this historical home of black art.