Album Review: Acid Reign - Daze Of the Week
Reviewed by Dan Barnes
Long before Municipal Waste took the crown for being the world’s premier Party Thrashers, that title was firmly held by Harrogate’s Acid Reign who, alongside Onslaught Sabbat and Xentrix, made up the ‘Big Four’ of British thrash metal.
Sadly for Acid Reign, two EPs and two full-lengths were all that the original incarnation of the band could muster between Moshkinstein in 1988 and Obnoxious in 1990 – the latter being in line for Worst Album Cover Ever – before splitting in 1991, but not before opening for such genre juggernauts as Flotsam and Jetsam, Exodus, Dark Angel and Nuclear Assault.
The band rebooted in 2015, headlined Bloodstock Open Air’s S.O.P.H.I.E. stage the following year and issued album number three, the Age of Entitlement in 2019. Now, seven years after that comes Acid Reign’s fourth album, with a sixty-percent new line up from the previous record, including guitarists Matt Smith and Darren McGillivary and ex- Shrapnel drummer Johnny Grimley, who join bassist Pete Dee and Mr Acid Reign himself, Howard H Smith, as ever on vocals, for Daze of the Week.
The first thing you’ll notice about the album – other than it’s Script for a Jester’s Tear parody cover art – is just how angry it is from the outset. The Who of You crashes in with a big statement opening and dense, dark old school thrash riffs, showing there is a seriousness about Acid Reign c.2026. Crunching riffs and a frantic pace match with H’s bile-spitting vocals and, in truth, I can’t recall ever hearing the frontman in such confrontational mood.
The title track comes with those Eighties thrash guitar tones and blends them with a snotty punk attitude and dissonant riffs all liberally sprinkled with classic Anthrax vibes. Alonely and No Truth are crunchy-riffed dancefloor fillers, full of driving rhythms and whiplash guitars, making you wonderwhere those high-tops trainers were stored and whether you can squeeze into those Bermuda shorts one last time. If you wore them the first time around, then the answer is No, you can’t and you’ll thank me for guiding you away from the inevitable injuries which would surely ensue.
Don’t just take my word for it; listen to the band’s dire warning on Old Young Man, the central part of the unashamed thrash trilogy that dominates the second half of Daze of the Week, beginning with Sorrowsworn’s frenzy and ending with Fantastic Passion’s break-neck speed, it feels like getting mugged from an old friend.
Acid Reign have built a reputation for being a good-time band, guaranteed to get any party started, and with H at the microphone they have a pocket-rocket frontman who can whip any crowd into a frenzy. What is often overlooked is their emotional depth, which Daze of the Week has in spades,and which gives this record a mature and, sometimes, introspective feel. Conniption King seems aimed at modern sensibilities and the obnoxious point of view they can engender. Slower and harder hitting than anything we’ve heard so far, it’s no less aggrieved in its position and allows the band to explore the limits of the genre.
Blind Lies starts like a Morbid Angel track and develops into a hardcore thrasher, possibly the most brutal I’ve ever heard Acid Reign; dark and confrontational, it’s the album’s longest tune, yet one that feels as though there’s more to be said on the subject. Closing tune, Centre of Everything opens with running water and a liquid guitar tone; H sings clean and when he does turn angry is does so with an intensity rather than with speed.
The whole band sound on top form throughout Daze of the Week; guitarists Matt and Darren give a masterful display of how to thrash in 2026, Johnny and Pete provide the engine that purrs like a kitten, but it’s H’s contribution to the album that is the icing on the cake. I can honestly say that I have never heard him deliver such a performance, exploring the ranges of his vocals and hitting every point with laser-sharp accuracy.
Production is crystal clear, dirty when it needs to be, but never muddy.
Next month I’ll be continuing my tradition of seeing Acid Reign at every Preston show they play, going back as far as 1988, when they opened for Nuclear Assault at the Chater Theatre one Friday night in October. Sounds impressive, until you realise it took them thirty-six years to make it back to town on Good Friday in 2024, but facts are facts.
