Official Live

Shortly after their debut demo “Prologue” Acrostichon released this live demo featuring three songs from their demo and one obscure track. For Acrostichon collectors the pressence of “Xenophobic Mania” is the sole reason for tracking down this live tape.

However, “Xenophobic Mania” is a pretty dull and very generic song compared to the other material. Someone once told me it was a song guitarist Richard Schouten had written years earlier and the band played it only in their earliest days to fill the set. It is easy to hear why the band replaced it by new material as soon as they could.

Now the best song from the debut demo (“Immolation Of The Agnostic”) is missing. This is a bit of a bummer since I’d rather here that one than “Elaborate Ritual”. The band probably opened with this song so the sound wasn’t good enough yet or changed too much during the song (remember, this is a one take live demo). Fortunately the other three tunes are performed adequately and don’t differ that much from the demoversions.

This is a nice collectors item if you’re into the old DM scene of the late eighties/early nineties. But please get their ‘regular’ demos first!