One thing is for certain about Akercocke – it doesn’t take a genius to figure out where they stand on the “prayer in schools” debate, if the title of the debut is any indication. Here’s another insight of which I’m quite confident – none of the members are gay, if the lady masturbating on the front cover, the two women making out on the back cover, the masturbating nun with her ass propped in the air on the inside cover, or the eight women on the inner sleeve are any indication. Yes, Akercocke loves the ladies. And they love Satan. But not necessarily in that order.

Yet it seems that the band could have used its fledgling budget from this self-financed affair a bit more wisely, funneling some of the cash spent on the graphic artist to a producer who knows how to do justice in the studio to a band this explosive and talented. Thanks to one Martin Bonsoir, who recorded, engineered and produced Rape, the sound is abysmal, causing me to wonder whether or not he was ever in the same room with the band, or whether he took a tape recorder to the bathroom on a break and accidentally left it there, running, while the fellows continued to play their guts out on the other side of the wall.

Regardless of the quality of the production, Rape is quite often phenomenal, Akercocke seemingly having the ability to transcend the ship-shoddy workmanship of Bonsoir with some of the most clever tunes the death metal genre has vomited forth in quite some time, infusing the music with a touch of class – or is that just the suits the band members are so fond of wearing onstage? – and a degree of musical experimentation without diluting the death content. Occasional female vocals. A smidgen of drum and bass. Minimal keyboards. Think Nile without the Egyptian motif. Or Hell’s house band.

If I were to complain about any aspect of the music other than the producer’s ineptitude, it would be the interludes interspersed between the songs. While I find the bitchy blasphemy of the ladies on the opener “Hell” rather amusing, not to mention the ladies screaming at what appears to be the feet of the Beast in “Marguerite & Gretchen,” they often tend to drag, interrupting the flow of the “deathier” tunes, conveying the vibe of an EP instead of a solid full length. But with outstanding numbers such as “Nadja,” “The Goat” and “Justine” shining so brightly, the brief experiments tend to pass quickly and painlessly.

Perhaps the most memorable and chilling aspect of the album is the eerie and dark soundscapes emanating from the music, infusing a genuine degree of moodiness that floats in the air phantomlike, not quite but almost tangible. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that it has been quite some time since I perceived death metal musicians as devout, practicing Satanists, regardless of the lyrical and iconographic venom they may so genuinely inject into the music. Anti-Christian, sure. But pro-Satan, no. But leave it to Akercocke to shit on this perception, crafting an exemplary extreme metal soundtrack for those inconspicuous and crowded basements illuminated with glowing candles, flickering just enough to outline the blood red pentagram painted on the floor and the anonymous minions chanting praises to Lucifer.

Since this release is somewhat of a challenge to track down, waste no time in finding it and grabbing it, the debut of a band that I feel just might be the demon-spawned future of death metal. And if they’re not, so what. At least we can say that they have forged something to raise the standard, to spice up the status quo of an all too often stagnant death metal underground.