Strange and sinister creatures stalk the Basque Country of Spain bringing terror to the area not seen since the likes of The Blind Dead rode into town in all their ghastly glory. Well that is what the imagination dictates when looking at Altarage who we are told are from Bilbao. Nothing is known about these ghouls, who they are what nefarious practices they get up to apart from making hideous music. They probably rob graves in their spare time and although they have been sighted playing live their hooded visages are never unmasked. Don’t worry those expecting another gimmicky and commercial orientated band this is deadly serious stuff and music for the minority of listeners. This lot are certainly not hiding from fame it’s something they will never achieve, well not unless they do something terrible and actually get caught at any rate.
Endinghent is their second album in just over a year following on from Doomentia release NIHL in 2016. We must have missed that one, I feel it would not have been easily forgotten. Taking us through the Portal, a band who this lot do resemble to a large extent we have a crushing flow of ‘Incessant Magma’ a molten slab of fiery heat stealthily destroying all in its path. Guitar sound is a swarm, never stopping shredding and devouring everything, there are cavernous bellows from the vocals and tar like doomy vice that grips and constricts like a noose. Somehow one expects the band are toying with their prey like a cat with a mouse and sure enough second track ‘Spearheaderon’ swipes away the slower gravity and explodes like a volcano erupting at maximum levels of destruction. Pummelling metal ov death enforced the intensity levels and feeling of unremitting, anti-humanist hate is more than evident. Guitars chop and churn making you feel a little queasy with them and the drummer thuds away without a shred of mercy. The hooded menaces flirt between bludgeoning extremity and slower gravid textures which remind of things crawling out of graves with the lingering scent of rot hanging in the air as they stalk through the cemetery. Tracks follow in quick succession and may at first seem quite similar designed to smash bones and coat in their foul odours. Incense no doubt hangs cloying in the air as they perform ghastly onstage rituals.
It’s a tight and well-coordinated assault that never quite borders on the dissonant side of things but does occasionally come close. Straddling a precipice on the fringes of madness and lunacy tracks like ‘Fold Eksis’ violently clamour with some strident guitar parts but it is the screech that they bring to ‘Rift’ which really prove challenging to listen to as they harvest like a horde of locusts. The album may only be 36 minutes in length but it really does test and put you through an audial pain threshold, devouring you rather than you devouring it. At least you will be quickly able to determine if this is the sort of agony that you are happy to put yourself through and one thing is for sure Altarage are not short changing anyone as far as the extreme side of things is concerned. By the time you make it through last track Barrier you will feel totally crushed by it and probably need a little bit of a lie down at the very least to recover!
(7.5 10 Pete Woods)
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