Entry 415 - Altars - Ascetic Reflection

 

It's always fun when you are trying to get into a new band. Going into this album I knew nothing about Altars except that they were from Australia and the hype sticker said for fans of Portal. Both of those are huge check marks for me, so into the collection it went.

As one might expect, Altars plays a highly dissonant and disjointed style of death metal. The riffs range from notes that don't belong together making ear piercing noises, to chugging riffs that sound like they were dug out of a a mire swirling with inhumanly grotesque creatures. All positives in my estimation.

The band's songs are a bit of an anomaly for me. I find that I tend to like the band when they are composing longer songs. Some of the shorter songs don't have idea's that are fully fleshed out and feel slightly incomplete to me. Especially the title track and Anhedonia. I'm not sure what is going on with these two tracks but they almost feel like filler tracks to me. They don't grab my attention and honestly unless I'm listening to them I could not remember a single riff.

To balance that out though Black Light Upon Us, Opening the Passage and Inauspicious Prayer are all incredibly well written songs. They have a sense of dynamics that is not present in other parts of the album. These slower, quieter parts I really think are integral to music like this, it helps create enough diversity in the album so that the more chaotic parts have more impact. If everything is chaotic all the time there is no point for the mind to rest if I'm trying to listen actively. These moments of respite are quite needed.

I still don't think I've fully digested this album at the point of this writing. Dissonant music does one of two things with me: it clicks instantly or it takes 10-20 listens for me to form a true opinion on it. I can firmly say that Altars is in the latter category. That said, I do keep coming back to this instead of discarding it...