This time Acheron will tell us the tales of the legendary creatures of the night that are according to them in fact the true shadow rulers of this world. Whatever - Acheron have always showed a strong fascination with whatever idelogy seems to be the most prevalent in the underground at the moment. But what about the music? It's still mostly mid-paced, rich with keyboards and blood-freezing doomish parts that suit the atmosphere quite well. In the past, Acheron has been playing a brand of death metal that would easily leave you bored after a few listens. Unfortunately, that's still the case with Those Who Have Risen. I'm not sure exactly what is it - but the arrangements could a part of the problem. You see, Acheron have become a collective consisting of quite skilled musicians, but the songwriting remains on a pretty basic level. There's simply not much happening within the songs besides skillfully crafted choruses.
The guitar solos on Those Who Have Risen actually remind me of those "outer space" shreddings that Nocturnus used to do a few years back. Nicely produced and skillfully executed, they are all over the place, making the listening experience an even more tedious exercise. That is quite regrettable, because the instrumental performance is invidually very strong on this album. The vocals of Vincent are also to blame for the general unadventurous nature of this album - they simply sound lazy and forced. He does some pretty killer and sick shrieking once in a while and that's when the band sound like they should've.
Acheron have been around for quite some time - more than 10 years to be precise. Their albums, while showing some development each time, still remain items of acquired taste. I doubt that anyone could realistically listen to them consistently... it always saddens me when I spend more time reading the lyrics than actually listening to the music itself. Picking up the pace a bit would do wonders for this band and I hope that they do so on their next opus. Otherwise they may still be left in the shadows of their own small and surely "cult" following. Which may not be a bad thing after all....
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