VANDEN PLAS – AcCult II

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7.0

• Bands:
  VANDEN PLAS
• Duration: 00:48:19
• Available from: 12/06/2026
• Label:

• Frontiers

There was a period, especially in the '90s, in which, in the wake of the success of MTV's “Unplugged” concerts, which featured dozens of artists, including bands like Nirvana, Alice In Chains and Pearl Jam, several groups, although accustomed to harsh sounds, tried their hand at acoustic versions of their songs.
In this context, Vanden Plas, in 1996, also released an acoustic EP, entitled “AcCult”, where they offered songs taken from their debut album, “Colour Temple”, alongside covers of songs more distant from their style.

This “AcCult II” was obviously born in a completely different context, but all in all with a not too dissimilar inspiration, namely that of experimenting with how songs that were conceived as prog metal sound, but which here are 'stripped' of electric instrumentation (although, to tell the truth, Alessandro Del Vecchio cannot help but use keyboards to some extent due to the absence of an orchestra or at least string instruments) to be revisited in a acoustics.
Naturally, compared to 1996, Vanden Plas' discography is now decidedly more extensive, so the German band fishes out a handful of songs from their entire background, adding a couple of covers.
Among their own songs, the initials “Far Off Grace” certainly stand out, which thanks to the particularity of the riff and melody, manages to be truly magical even in the acoustic version and “Holes In The Sky”, which does very well with its charge of pathos. Also noteworthy are “Postcard To God”, completely revisited, with a nice mellotron solo and the final “You Fly”, where John Helliwell of Supertramp appears as a guest on sax.
“Healing Tree” has also been completely rearranged, where Andy Kuntz duets with a female voice, but honestly for us the version on “Beyond Daylight” continues to be preferable, while “The Ghost
As for the covers, “Boat On The River” by Styx and “Nothing Else Matters” by Metallica are chosen: there will probably be thousands of covers of the latter, but Alessandro Del Vecchio has the idea of ​​proposing a version focused mainly on the piano, with a rather original result.

An album, therefore, in which Vanden Plas put themselves on the line: we cannot help but observe that this is perhaps not the natural dimension of Stephan Lill, who still manages very well, but in his solos with the acoustic guitar he tends to focus perhaps more on speed than on expressiveness, just as in some cases, as we have had the opportunity to specify, the musicians still seem to look for power rather than harmonies.
However, the fact that it is not what they usually do does not mean that “AcCult II” as a whole was not successful, so it will certainly be interesting, especially for fans of the German group, to rediscover them in this different guise and appreciate some of their songs in these different versions.