Whats up with Akercocke?

Question: Is there any current (as in 2011 or at least late 2010) status on Akercocke? Their website went down and it seems that the DVD they were going to release just kind of disappeared? I've been missing them.

Also, thanks for the 320 rip of the new Wormrot album, it's good to see even record companies caring about good quality!

from blberkeley@aol.com


Answer: Akercocke are still semi-active dude, they just played Norway's INFERNO festival a couple of weekends ago infact. See the song 'Leviathan' performed in France as recently as April 2011 below:




Akercocke hasn't been on the Earache label for a few years now - since their deal with us expired after 2007's "Antichrist" they decided to go the DIY route- which is fair enough, and we wished them the very best in that endeavour.

So speaking unofficially, it seems to me that a few factors have affected the Akercocke camp in recent times to cause them to disappear from view. Notably mainman Jason Mendonca has a young family now - preventing any extensive touring.Though the band do still play weekend gigs and a select few festivals so they still have a profile and have categorically not split up.

Because of the recent hiatus, guitarist Matt Wilcock and drummer David Gray formed The Antichrist Imperium, while David has been bashing the skins at a much slower tempo as drummer for My Dying Bride on the live circuit.

It was reported last year that guitarist Matt Wilcock (Ex-Berzerker) was quitting Akercocke to persue other projects, with no bad blood evident. He was replaced by Dan Knight of fellow London extremists Ted Maul, who can be seen on the video above.

As for the non appearance of the DVD. I have no first hand knowledge, so can only speculate: I reckon that somehow the finished footage didn't match the bands exacting visual standards, so it must have been shelved, rather than release a sub-standard product to fans.

The band website going down and domain being for sale is news to me- given that Jason is a highly qualified IT professional in his day job you'd think it would be a breeze to at least fix up a website to keep fans informed. The fact they choose to not keep up a twitter or facebook account, and their last update to myspace was Feb 2010, just adds to the overall air of mystery surrounding the band. I'm sure its just simply because mainman Jason is too busy with "real life" to find time to update.

Heres AKERCOCKE at Inferno festival May 2011.