ALTAR OF PLAGUES — White Tomb (review)

ALTAR OF PLAGUES — White Tomb album cover

Album · 2009 · Atmospheric Black Metal

4/5 · 2020-04-06
siLLy puPPy

And like an impending pestilence that rains mortality and despair across the lands far and wide, Ireland’s ALTAR OF PLAGUES was unleashed like a potato famine from their cryptic whereabouts in Cork only to bring depressive sonic terror to a doomed planet where nary a ray of light exists behind the toxic clouds of an eternal scourge that extinguishes the silver cord to infinity. Existing somewhere in the murky sonic nebulous worlds of ambient black metal, post-rock and sludgy doom, ALTAR OF PLAGUES is one of those bands that has focused less on tight-knit fiery compositions that display the any trace of melodic songwriting skills and virtuoso dynamism but rather reincarnated from the depths of hell to evoke extreme emotional distress through sonic orotundity.

This band that formed in 2006 released a few demos before casting a more official form of darkness with this debut album WHITE TOMB that reflects a post-apocalyptic angst of bleakness delivered by the lineup of James Kelly (vocals, guitars, keyboards), Jeremiah Spillane (guitars), Dave Condon (bass, vocals) and S. MacAnri (drums). Through four long tracks that range from 10 to 15 minutes, this 50 minute rage-a-thon delivers everything from the classic black metal goods of heavily distorted tremolo guitar riffing along with blastbeats and anguished vocals to ethereal dark ambience that reinforces the gravitational pull of distorted darkness and even allows a few guest vocals from Stephen Lordan and Nathan Misterek to utter their pain every now and again.

This album runs very much in the vein of post-rock with slower cyclical riffs slowly gaining maturity through the elements of incremental tempo gains, dynamic intensity increases and the variations that occur through subtle changes that build to some sort of climactic release after several minutes. ALTAR OF PLAGUES is the epitome of a post-metal paradigm only under the banner of a black metal barrage of the senses. Similar to bands like Wolves In The Throne Room, Fen and Deafhaven, this Irish band excels in long thunderous excursions into noisy cacophonous black metal bombast but also allows a little breathing room with quieter passages that offer hypnotic and reflective moments when the perception of the true horrors of reality are allowed to be cogitated upon at least for a brief respite in time.

Verging on blackgaze at times, ALTAR OF PLAGUES often sounds like a broken record of Deafhaven puncturing a hole in space time with only a spiraling and unstable atmospheric collapse generating the ultimate vibrational recipe to destroy the Schumann resonance and craft an expansive degree to insanity. Long dark winters projected through lengthy blistering tracks evoke a touch of Darkspace or even A Forest Of Stars but somehow the band manages to exist within its own sliver of a spectral paradigm of dark atmospheric blackened metal that laments the realities of oppression, urbanism and ecological collapse. Sounding like the industrial razed wastelands coming to life in pure vitriol, gloomy doom fueled atmospheres lurk like servants of Lord Voldemort whose astral entities are ready for attack following the complete usurpation of the physical realm.

I cannot think of a more appropriate band to experience the distressing and formidable realities of the current state of the world in March 2020 with ghastly demonic forces hiding in every foreseeable nook and cranny of space and time and ready to attack on the astral plane where unwilling victims consent through charlatan subterfuge. Honestly i’m not really sure how to classify WHITE TOMB and ALTAR OF PLAGUES in general. Is it black metal? Sludge metal? Post-metal? Just plain experimental hardcore hued to the darkest tones imaginable? In the end it doesn’t really matter. If you seek a cathartic toxic elixir for bleakness for the times and resonate with sounds so utterly devoid of hope which engage in more depressive vibes than one can stand, then ALTAR OF PLAGUES is what you have been waiting for. Not only has evil come to steal your soul but it demands you worship its very existence and here’s some music to make it all OK.