Drowning listeners in an endless black sea of hellish sounding death metal, the San Jose,CA based band known as, Altars, unleashes a merciless assault of extreme terror on their self-titled debut EP.
The band offers up four explosive tracks containing a sinister sound and attitude similar to that of classic death metal and grindcore bands that laid the foundation for extreme music. These musicians do not hesitate when pertaining to brutality and the music simply suffocates and possesses your overall senses. I also liked how the four tracks flowed and you get little to catch your breath on this EP. The opening track, “Unholy Retribution,” begins with a burst of distorted feedback to create an abysmal and very terrifying atmosphere, which eventually turns into a massive hurricane of vicious death metal. I thought the musicianship was rather impressive overall and the recording quality of each instrument is well captured throughout the release.
The second track on the album, “Conqueror,” is definitely more of a fast paced old school grindcore like piece and contains some extreme rapid fire drumming and riffs. I feel like the music comes and goes leaving behind a decimated wasteland of complete and utter carnage. The third song, “Ancient Plague,” I felt was a more dynamic sounding track compared to the first two. In the beginning on the song the band does an impressive job building up a very bleak and doom like sounding atmosphere before dragging listeners down into a swamp of distorted chaos. “Black Magic,” wraps up the EP with more bellicose sounding death metal riffs and demonic growls. The singer even lets out a blood curdling scream in the middle of the song which adds to the already horror like and fear inducing atmosphere.
Overall, I think Altars presented some solid music with their debut EP and leaves me wanting more from this band. The musicianship did not disappoint along with the band’s ability to construct terrorizing atmospheres of brutal death metal. Also, Altars is yet another impressive act to have their music released on Sentient Ruin Laboratories, which is a label that continues to deliver some of the best up and coming extreme music acts around. In the end, there is some killer music being conjured up in San Jose, CA that I hope continues to strike fear in the hearts of priests and may one day awaken the destructive forces from starless voids beyond.
Altars "Conqueror" :
Altars Bandcamp:
altars666.bandcamp.com
Sentient Ruin Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/SentientRuin/
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