ADX: “Acier Doux” With a Mean Right Hook
Album Description:
ADX show up in French metal the way a slammed door shows up in a quiet apartment building. Formed in Paris in 1982, they didn’t arrive to politely “carve out a place.” They arrived to shove. Fast songs, sharp edges, and that particular French stubbornness that doesn’t translate well, which is kind of the point.
The name is the funniest part: ADX means “Acier DouX” — literally “soft steel” — and yes, it’s a metallurgy abbreviation. That’s it. No mystical origin story. Just a cold little technical term that looks good on a jacket back patch. And if you’ve heard ADX at speed, you already know “soft” is doing overtime here.
I always think of them as a band that wanted momentum more than perfection. You can feel it in the way the riffs lean forward, like they’re late for something. Not “atmospheric.” Not “tasteful.” More like: get out of the way.
Early on, the spine of the band was simple and effective: Phil Grélaud up front, Pascal Betov and Hervé “Marquis” Marquis trading guitar cuts, Deuch on bass, and Didier “Dog” Bouchard driving the whole thing with that no-nonsense kick-snare insistence. No frills. Just a tight fist.
They started with demos in 1984, then dropped their debut full-length “Exécution” in 1985. It doesn’t sound like a band politely introducing themselves. It sounds like a band testing how hard the room can take a hit. The guitars bite, the drums don’t “support” anything — they push.
The mid-’80s run is the stuff people actually replay. “La terreur” (1986), “Suprématie” (1987), and the live “Exécution publique” (1988) feel like a band learning how to aim their speed instead of just flooring it. When they lock in, they don’t glide — they charge.
By 1990 they’d landed on “Weird Visions”, which is a funny title because the record isn’t dreamy at all. It’s more like the world got a little stranger and ADX decided the correct response was to play harder, not softer.
Then the timeline gets real-life messy, because bands are made of humans, not press releases: active stretches, breaks, returns. They came back with “Résurrection” in 1998, then later pushed into the 2000s and beyond with “Division blindée” (2008) and “Immortel” (2011). Not a reinvention. More like a stubborn reappearance: “Yeah, we’re still here.”
“Ultimatum” lands in 2014, “Non Serviam” in 2016, and “Bestial” in 2020 — a title that doesn’t bother pretending to be subtle. By then, ADX are less “up-and-coming” anything and more a persistent noise in the background of French metal history. The kind you can ignore only if you never actually put the needle down.
These days the lineup has shifted like it always does with long-running bands, but the core idea hasn’t: riffs first, speed second, manners never. You don’t go to ADX for a lecture. You go to get clipped in the jaw by a chorus and somehow feel better about the world afterward.
