Altar Of Plagues | ‘Sol’
What is it that makes great extreme metal? Usually it’s a question that boils down to one thing: how much the people making it mean it. Where we’ve gotten to in metal is an interesting place. It isn’t really a case of good and bad any more. Ever since a while now, it’s been a case of the good, the bad, and the sickeningly, atrociously, inescapable and seemingly all pervasive average.
Though t’were never any other way, it seems somehow instructive to look back to the nineties, where extreme metal enjoyed its height of naïve yet musically brilliant authenticity. The best of it was better – miles better – than the best of it is now. Even the mediocre stuff was fucking brilliant in comparison to the dreck coming out now. Maybe it’s an age thing. But for my money, Altar Of Plagues, being ten years too late to participate in the halcyon days of Misanthropy et al, right now are bang on time.
Their excellent demos promised much, but cried out for more. More time to gestate, more ideas to realise, more to learn. Well, they did it all. ‘Sol’ is the perfect document of this stage of their career – one which we’ll hopefully look back on like a ‘Dance Of December Souls’ or a ‘HEart Of The Ages’ in years to come. Were only the labels that saw to those releases around to do the same thing for the most worthy Irish contenders since For Ruin.
Opening with a clanging, discordant jar, it’s crammed full of atmosphere and meaning from the start. Everything sideways in the underground is evoked: Thorns, Ved Buens Ende, In The Woods, oldest Katatonia and Ulver, and on anon. Which would be great on its own. What marks out Altar Of Plagues as special however is their disregard for genre. It is this talent that then allows them to throw in as much Isis and Red Sparowes that their ferric, modern Blut Aus Nord sound can take.
The astounding centrepiece ‘Twisted Structures Against The Sun’ is the highlight of this stylistic fusion. Listening again and again, it’s increasingly difficult to decide what genre this stuff actually is. Surely Black; but then the slight hint of elation – the redemptive note common to all post rock – throws it all open to question again.
If extreme metal was ever about anything, confounding and confusing must have been it. Altar Of Plagues have managed both. In stepping outside Black Metal’s pretences, they straddle their lesser peers. In bringing a real Scandinavian discomfort to post rock however, they honour the timeless spirits – that time, those names - that live on in their music. In doing so, they are their own men: the highest praise any band could want.
4.9 + Earl Grey / 5 - Ciaran Tracey ::: 24/03/08