VINCENT CROWLEY

 

The deep waters flow so sluggishly as to appear motionless, like a black mirror reflecting endless nothingness; this river of pain, of woe, of loss...of endings. All that you were slips from you as the boat drifts onwards, the steersman standing silently behind you. Ancient lanterns that have never been lit, but never go out, hang from poles thrust haphazardly into the mud of the far shore that creeps ever closer with each second of your silent passage. Eyes glisten at the edge of the absolute darkness, catching the weak, flickering light of the scattered flames. They wait with jagged tooth and broken claw, with dry and shrivelled hearts as old as time, beyond the banks of Acheron...

After thirty years fronting Acheron,gods of blasphemy, kings of the underworld, Vincent Crowley realised that the band had reached its end. The litanies of defiance and inversion had all been spoken and it was time to walk a new path. Joined by his former colleague in corruption, guitarist Art Taylor and ex-Blood Coven drummer Ryan Arter, Crowley decided to raise his own standard and march beneath his own name. The first release from the Vincent Crowley band is named, most appropriately, Beyond Acheron and it travels into new territories of nightmare and horror. Inspired by masters of terror like Lovecraft and Poe, Crowley and his cohorts have created music to chill the soul, songs damp with the mist of midnight graveyards, choked with the dust of lost and forgotten tombs. The haunted horrors of ‘My Eternal Vow’, the dark majesty of ‘Bring Forth The Dead’ with its searing solo and the sombre funeral procession of ‘Farewell (At Death’s Door)’, all these macabre masterpieces will transport you to an enticing realm of the unnatural.

Beyond Acheron was recorded at Sonic Lounge Studios in Grove City, Ohio and engineered, mixed and mastered by Joe Viers (Jacob’s Dream, Robot Lords Of Tokyo etc), with the stunning cover art being created by Timo Wuerz, whose work adorns albums by Obscura, Sacred Steel, Widow and of course, Acheron. Metal and darkness entwined, Beyond Acheron is steeped in the aura of days gone by, when the underground was a place of mystery and treasures hidden from the light.