Brit alt.metallers Acres display their potential – with some big choruses to match – on album two, Burning Throne.
Acres’ profile has grown steadily in recent months, and on their second album, they’re making themselves known by taking a crowd-pleasing approach. It does, to an extent, work – after all, it’s hardly difficult to like anthemic guitar music with a good old soaring chorus. However, it’s also easy to win a game of Post-Hardcore Bingo with Burning Throne. Tortured lyrics? Yep. Big riffs? Yep. A bit of growling, to give it some edge? Congratulations, you’ve got a full house.
This album is certainly good at what it does, particularly when it leans towards the heavier end of its spectrum. It’s slick, it’s focused, and its production is as glossy as anything, if occasionally cramped. Opener Nothing grinds slowly before shifting gears into one of the record’s strongest choruses, and it’s only bolstered by a spectacularly guttural guest turn from Silent Planet’s Garrett Russell. My Everything and Into Flames are equally strong, their melodies flightier and its guitars containing more grit, and represent the biggest fulfilment of this band’s potential.
Ballads, however, are where they stumble. Visual Hallucinations moves in a straight line without trying to soar and isn’t exactly begging to be remembered, and while the shoegazey atmospherics of The Death Of Me offer pleasant variety, it’s a Holding Absence song in all but name. Indeed, perhaps identity is part of Burning Throne’s problem – it doesn't quite suss how Acres can make themselves unique yet.
That said, they’ve built themselves a solid foundation, and Burning Throne is definitely easy enough to like. Acres do have potential for more – they just have to unlock it.
Verdict: 3/5
For fans of: As Everything Unfolds, Bad Omens, Of Mice & Men
Burning Throne is out now via A Wolf At Your Door
