Based in Lansing, Michigan, Acid Arrow is a Doom Metal band focused on writing fantasy concept albums.
Acid Arrow is directly inspired by fantasy metal pioneers Rainbow and Ronnie James Dio, doom greats like The Sword and Candlemass, as well as modern acts like Gnome and Castle Rat.
Acid Arrow is:
Andy Jeglic - Vocals, Guitars
Josh Story - Lead Guitar
Justin O'Kelly - Bass
Connor Peil - Drums
Acid Arrow's debut record. The album was written, performed, recorded, and mixed by Andy Jeglic.
The Savage Throne is a concept album that explores themes of virtue, corruption, exploitation, and how the weaponization of a system's values ultimately results in their downfall.
The Savage Throne will be released in its entirety in 2027.
A young warrior of the Eagle Clan wins the right to challenge his chieftain in open combat. He defeats him and is stabbed in the back after showing mercy. The clan, unwilling to challenge the chieftain, banishes the young warrior. Left for dead with only the chieftain's knife, he stumbles upon a druid woman about to be burned by members of his former clan. Knowing their reputation for healing magic, he rescues her, and she brings him to the druids' grove where his wounds are treated.
The grove is a pacifist community governed by law and magic. Its members prohibit behavior and materials associated with the violence of the Eagle Clan, including killing and the use of iron. A magical ward generated at the elders' sanctum conceals the grove from detection, and taboo behavior or materials brought within the sanctum risk interfering with the magic.
The protagonist is regarded with suspicion at first, but gradually earns a place in the grove through his physical ability and the advocacy of the woman he rescued, whose compassion is regarded as fanatical even by the elders. During a coming-of-age ritual in the sanctum, a child panics and nearly suffocates. To rescue the child, the druid woman grabs the protagonist's knife and crosses the threshold to cut it free, damaging the ward in the process.
Shaken by this, the elders fear a loss of control and further damage to the ward if they do not act. They determine that both the woman and the protagonist are dangerous and must be removed. Unable to banish the woman due to her popularity after saving the child, they decide to manipulate the protagonist into killing her. They summon him, frame the woman as an existential threat, and convince him that he alone can save the grove. After he reluctantly follows through with the murder, the elders betray and banish him, using his act as a rallying cry for purification and xenophobia.
Cast out a second time, he reaches a bitter conclusion: these systems never believed in their own virtues. The virtues were simply tools used to preserve power for those in control. Tired of being used and now wise to the game, he decides to use his knowledge of both societies to undermine them and seize power for himself.
He returns to the Eagle Clan in disguise, assassinates the chieftain, and rallies the clan against the grove. After conquering it, he combines the loyalty of his former clan with magic wrested from the defeated elders to conquer the wider world. The world he rules, stripped of all virtues beyond fealty and subservience, is worse than the one before it, and he finds his reign to be empty of meaning.
The cover of The Savage Throne
The band performing.
Left to right: Peil, Story, Jeglic, O'Kelly