Artist: Acceptance
Title: Crucifixtion Of Orchids
Type: EP
Label: Digital / Road To Masochist
This was actually released last May and is therefore a little old for usual inclusion, but it came to me in such a serendipitous manner that after loving it I had to review it too. I acquired this after not realising that buying some compilations from Rage Against The Dying Of The Children I was entered in a raffle I hadn’t noticed and won this. Even better not knowing the band I discovered they used to be called Fatalist whose ‘Awake, Arise..’ EP I had purchased back in 2019 and never known what had happened to them. They changed their name to Acceptance…..
I love it when a non-plan comes together.
‘Grief’ opens the EP, a slow opening drone cascading into a bleak riff. IT immediately feels like a post-black, sludge soundscape and as the initial crying vocals howl into the void you are pulled straight into an exemplary sound. It just has that dark feel of assurance and real class and emotions. And then in speeds up and we somehow veer back from the post- and far closer to the tempestuous world of black metal. It’s a fine hinterland, this sound, but the surge of the music, the strange grim melody, the feel of catharsis scraping out the grief from their soul is just fantastic.
‘Empyreal’ immediately soars along a deep, melancholy and yearning meldy deep in the riff. This is the kind of feel that black metal bands of the ilk of Fellwarden or Winterfylleth have, yet allied to a more sludge based engine. The tempo shifts are beautiful, the passages of sombre quiet twisting the knife. Those vocals clawing their way out with the last shreds of emotion. This is the kind of song that plays in my head, staring out from a hill near me, seeing a world both ancient and modern moving along without me somehow. It’s a deep experience, a moving one.
‘Wither’ has a somehow a harsher edge to the sound, leaning fully into black metal in the faster sections. I wither, I rot at the end of the vine. I feel so frail, I show remorse. No one answers, no one cares. And yet somehow this is not the sound of succumbing without a fight, this is a strange combination of regret, acceptance and the last fire kept within. The ferocity, the quiet, the bleak grey world it creates; all exist within the music and the words.
‘Ark’ is a shorter, beautifully melodic song that can slide from the black metal to a slightly progressive almost death metal sound with no jolt, no disconnection, the a punch to the head before the epic closing track ‘Paradise’. Eerie running bass, pattering drums in an almost post-punk style before the heart wrenching riff and melody cuts through. I want peace, I will be done with my displays, it promises with fury. The determination, the cartharsis inherent in the words and the howls is devastating. Every man shall crawl through hell prolonging the second before you burst… Bound within this storm of music, even at the relative calm of the eye, this is just the sinews of that stubborn refusal to do anything that is not their way, even if the end is in no doubt.
Despite the sound, despite the lyrical concerns, there is something completely and utterly life-affirming in this raw, tempestuous howl of pain and anger and resilience. It is as though Acceptance face this world for me so I can take their primal scream and use it to rise again, to find the next step when I thought there was not one left within. I find real strength here even whilst staring unflinching into the void. That the void stares back does not give me cause for fear, because by my side I have Acceptance.
Please, go listen to this. It is indeed the beauty in the darkness.
Gizmo
Walking The Liminal Space 