ACxDC – Antichrist Demoncore – Melotov Records

I just want to start this review off by saying that I am NOT the guy trying to sell the limited edition version of this on Discogs for $80. Now that that’s out of the way…clears throat…to go along with their wildly popular EPs, splits with other great bands, cult-like merch, a European tour, and now a full length going for 80 bones on the Internet; ACxDC gets to hold the honor of being the first band to be reviewed more than once on my site, as I reviewed their split with To The Point back in January which can be read here. So congrats all around.

I’m not going to tell you about ACxDC , hopefully you already know, if not, there’s a metric fuck ton of shit on them in the Googleverse. Getting straight to the LP, despite the incredible packaging and sound on Antichrist Demoncore, this entire LP comes down to memorable moments for me. I’ll likely get crushed for this admission, but most of what I remember about The Second Coming is the Ron Burgundy sound bite to open it up, despite having jammed it sporadically the last couple years.  Antichrist Demoncore though, is chock full of memorable moments and I feel that they are a direct result of vocal variety and a relative, to them, higher speed to groove ratio. Make no mistake, Sergio’s brand of stab wound style vocals are here, but he throws in some more traditional hardcore yells and my favorite are the death type growls that come in over the top of him.  And it works, especially for a full length. Don’t get it twisted on the speed either. This thing blasts just as fast as anything they’ve put out, but they put their full range on display here, which again translates well for a full length. You want to grind, let’s grind. You want to thrash, here’s a 20 second groove. You want to point your finger, here’s some hardcore.  Antichrist Demoncore is a full showcase of styles that should Buk missile its place into history.

Let’s get into some songs. This thing comes in strong as fuck, no intro, no build up, just a straight up vocal assault with a combo of Sergio’s splatter vox in front of demonic growls all carried by blistereing fast hardcore to kick off “Destroy//Create”.  They break it down around the 40 second mark and keep the pace at a slow mosh before jackhammering it out. Memorable track right from the get go. “Vegangelical” is another standout, with choppy hardcore riffing and a sing along breakdown that explodes into some of the most violent sounding vocals on the LP to end the track. The chug groove in the middle of “Hipler Youth” is god damned perfection. I’m nearly positive that’s a melodic guitar riff on “Endless Failure”. “Dead Cops” is just plain catchy as fuck…”I hope that Dorner’s ghost comes back to seek revenge”…has been humming through my head for 2 days now. The slow churn on nearly 2 minute “Filicide” is that balance to the speed I was talking about up above and very well done. The Weekend Nachos style, slow instrumental work on “Give Up” is the fucking mic drop on this masterpiece. Given a 100 more chances, I’m not sure ACxDC could come up with a better way to close out this record than they did with that song.

To close this out, if you’ve been waiting for an ACxDC record that you didn’t have to get up to flip as soon as you sat down, here it is. If you liked the range they teased you with on their side of the To The Point split, well here’s the whole burrito. The reality is that I like grindcore, and outside of a few, it doesn’t always translate to full lengths all that great and honestly, I’m not sure I want to hear a 12” of The Second Coming (I like that record, I promise). However, what ACxDC have done on Antichrist Demoncore is nuked the barriers of grindcore from orbit and given us a full length album with legitimate staying power. Look, I’m not saying I wouldn’t love to see Antichrist Demoncore followed up with an EP or split of some sound barrier breaking, Wookie type shit packed with some 30 second sound bites of explosive diarrhea because that’s exactly what I hope they do. In the meantime though, I going to enjoy the hell out of Antichrist Demoncore and respect it as ACxDC’s hands down, best effort.  Chuck Billy sized props to ACxDC and Melotov Records for putting this out.