Having seen ACHREN a couple of times live, they have always delivered a crushing display of raw power and brutal metal that is bonecrunching to the core to say the least, and with performances at the prestigious Wacken Open Air and Metalcamp, along with the UK’s best metal festival, Bloodstock Open Air, earlier this year, 2011 has been one hell of a year for those mighty Scots, ACHREN.

So I jumped at the opportunity to review their debut album, ‘The Forgotten King’. Describing themselves as Blood Metal, they mix a few various sub genres of metal in the form of death, black and thrash to create a unique sound that has been fused together extremely well to create an album full of cracking numbers that keep the listener engrossed from start to finish.

Opening number ‘Impaled’ starts off with a nice build up from the drums before the machine like riffage opens fire. The first thoughts of the impressive vocals, courtesy of Scott Anderson, is man, he sounds a bit like Max Cavalera, before he changes it up to something more akin to black metal screeches showing that Scott has some variety to his vocals not only here, but throughout this album with the use of death metal growls and death and black metal screams.

The guitarwork is outstanding, and brilliant as they mix usage of styles found in thrash, death and black metal to their advantage and pull off some killer, destructive riffs and some awesome solos with aplomb, with an early example being ‘The Way of The Twilight Or The Aura of Flies’. Try remembering that after a few beers! ‘Bastards On The Gallows Or Bastards On The Rack’ is a great pacy number that is also quite upbeat and catchy as hell. You can’t help but headbang to it and throw some fists during the choral section.

Picking out a few favourites from the album is not easy. In fact, the whole album is so well constructed its damn right impossible, however, seen as I am black metal fan, it would be rude of me not to mention ‘Darkest Day’ which uses some excellent black metal style guitarwork and was a real treat, but the likes of ‘Manuel’s Mile’ and ‘Fury of The Northmen’ are also worthy of mentions for their extremely catchy yet still brutallic nature.

The fast paced and crushing ‘Pestilence’ is a fitting way to wrap up the album, and to say its good is an understatement. This is not only solid throughout, but a brilliant listen from start to finish that shows off the best of what ACHREN has to offer, full blooded, uncompromising and brutal, yet shows great song structure and writing too! The production is great too, with everything sounding pretty much at the right levels in the mix, yet not so polished that it loses that tiny bit of roughness around the edges that gives it that bit of atmosphere and aura you need with releases in the extreme metal genre. To sum up the album in one word, Superb!

Rating: 4.5/5.0

Review By Adam Fredericks