AKERCOCKE — Rape of the Bastard Nazarene (review)

AKERCOCKE — Rape of the Bastard Nazarene album cover

Album · 1999 · Death Metal

4/5 · 2024-03-28
siLLy puPPy

AKERCOCKE emerged on the London extreme metal scene in 1997 formed by vocalist / guitarist Jason Mendonça and drummer David Gray who had both previously played in the black metal band Salem Orchid. After recruiting guitarist Paul Scanian, keyboardist Martin Bonsoir and bassist Peter Theobalds, the bizarrely named AKERCOCKE commenced to create some of the wildest and craziest extreme metal of the entire 90s and with the release of its debut RAPE OF THE BASTARD NAZARENE, many extremophile metalheads certainly took notice! While the 90s had been the decade of death metal, black metal and the splintering off of many newly designated subgenres, AKERCOCKE was unusual in how it took aspects of many styles of metal and non-metal alike and forged a completely new stylistic approach.

Deemed as one of the best British debut albums ever released by Terrorizer magazine, AKERCOCKE hit the scene and immediately stood out for its erratic stage presence, unorthodox musical style and over-the-top celebration of everything Satanic and psycho-sexual. In this regard the band took the ethos of the early 70s band Black Widow where it did away with any subtitles and ambiguity and simply announced in full celebratory glee that Christianity was bad and everything Satan or Lucifer was to be revered. Perhaps a little adolescent in approach but adds a humorous element to an otherwise extremely intense delivery of death metal growls that mixed grindcore, black metal, post-punk and a touch of progressive rock.

This debut is quite different than the more progressive albums that followed. RAPE OF THE BASTARD NAZARENE was the band’s gritty grimy DIY self-released album that featured a muddy production and a give no fucks attitude about how to deliver a stream of Satanic extreme metal compositions and crazy spoken word narratives that pop up throughout the album’s original 33 minute plus run. After the short declaration of two girls denouncing all things Christian and declaring only Satan and Lucifer as the true way, the album starts off with a bizarre metal style that is really apparent what exactly it is. It sounds like death metal with growly vocals, blastbeat drumming ferocity, speedfest riffing and the intensity of an old school death metal but it also features a buzzing guitar sound, call and response female vocals backing up the growly leads and an unorthodox sort of grindcore meets post-punk compositional style.

The tracks retain a rather industrial style as if Killing Joke were the basis of the rhythms while the death metal handled the tones, timbres and delivery system. The track “Marguerite & Gretchen” jumps into a strange progressive metal style with clean vocals and crazy time signatures along with varying musical motifs that find the clean vocals and the growly ones having a full fledged duet along with female singers as the backups. The album is regularly interpreted by various intermissions that reaffirm their allegiance to Satan such as the 2-minute “Conjuration” which makes the entire album feel as if it was made by a Satanic cult. In this regard it reminds me of those Father Yod and his Ya Ho Wa 13 projects from the 70s were the cult members participated in chanting and other subordinate musical contributions.

I guess the best term to describe this would be avant-blackened death metal but really the debut by AKERCOCKE is unique even by the band’s own standards. It’s like the ferocious old school death metal of Obituary collided with the Luciferian first wave black metal of Venom with the giddiness of 70s Black Widow, the grind aspects of Pig Destroyer along with some prog technicalities and dark ambient rituals. The album doesn’t seem to get a lot of love in the greater AKERCOCKE canon but it’s actually one of my favorites. It’s so bizarre and unapologetically evil as fuck that it becomes endearing in a very morbid twisted way! Best of all the album is a testament to the creative spirit of a newbie band spewing its venom on the world’s stage. Add to that the instrumental interplay is excellent and the juxtaposition of styles and interludes makes the entire thing come off as a stage performance of some kind. While the production is the main complaint on this one, personally i find it makes the underground cult feel more authentic. To me this is an excellent slice of crazy extreme metal from the 90s.