Band:	ACxDC
Album:	Satan Is King
Style:	Grindcore, Hardcore
Release date:	May 2020

01. Singe
02. Mouth Breather
03. Gorged
04. Satan Is King
05. Turncoat
06. Matapacos
07. Copsucker
08. Propaganda Of The Deed
09. Exercise In Futility
10. Urban Blight
11. Come Out Fighting
12. Revenge
13. Ashes To Ashes
14. Back In Black Bloc
15. Maggot Museum

I really don't remember AC/DC being this heavy, but I guess it comes with age.

Hold on, do you mean to tell me that AC/DC and ACxDC are two different bands? I really thought Brian Johnson could just scream like that at his age. Well turns out that ACxDC (standing for "AntiChrist DemonCore is not the Australian hard rock band that your dad likes, but a Californian powerviolence (a sort of grindcore leaning more towards hardcore, basically what Nails are also doing) band. The more you know. But I am probably not the first one to make that joke, and if someone from ACxDC would be reading this review, they'd already be rolling their eyes. But then again, they literally named their band ACxDC. What did you expect?

ACxDC were formed in 2003, back when AC/DC was already kind of becoming the joke it is today, but so far Satan Is King is only their second album. They didn't really sit idly for all that time, since there are plenty of demos, EPs and splits, even an EP they released this year as well, deceptively titled The Very Best Of Antichrist Demoncore. Regardless, for such a long career and having already made a name for themselves, releasing a proper full length is quite a special occasion. But don't let the "full-length" term fool you into thinking you'll spend much time on Satan Is King without the use of a replay button. This is powerviolence after all, so 23 minutes really is as "full-length" as it gets. And with 15 tracks, you can only imagine the brevity of these songs. And the pace.

The album is fairly political, having less and less of the humor of older ACxDC releases, spouting at injustice and all that, but it's not like you could get most of what's being screamed here, other than the "Satan Is King" chorus. You don't really need this album to tell you about injustice, since today it's getting harder and harder to let it pass. This album was composed/released before shit hit the fan, but that doesn't mean that things weren't just as bad before, just that people are starting to notice. Would a band write "Copsucker" if decades upon decades of police brutality and lack of accountability didn't already build up? It took more than 15 years of them screaming at our evil through the perceived evil of Satanism before their music actually found a time when it made full sense. And Satan Is King is that now. Get angry.

Satan Is King is about as much as you can want from a veteran powerviolence act. Of course most of the album is distorted breakneck blitzes of violence, but with just enough absolutely crushing changes into slower paces and lower vocals, but never leaving too much of the punk energy behind. The band is at their best when they shift between the two, making the sound heavier than the sum of its parts and keeping it from feeling too one-dimensional. ACxDC wouldn't be half as great if the vocals weren't as vicious, the bass as pounding, the drums as relentless, the guitars as razor-sharp. This album is just terrifyingly angry and defiant, and it's out of most powerviolence albums out there, this one is really great at displaying its craftmanship too.

As the old saying, that is perfectly exemplified here, goes: "Hail Satan and smash the state".