Altar Of Plagues – Mammal (Profound Lore Records)
There’s been many a critic’s pen aflutter over the recent wave of bands who incorporate elements of black metal without really buying into the whole corpse-paint-and-shitty-recording-quality aesthetic that the genre’s clung to so strongly over the years. Some of these bands are great (Deafheaven, Skagos), some are pretty good (Wolves In The Throne Room), and some are just fucking terrible (Liturgy), but they all possess a tendency to pull from sources outside of the genre’s orthodoxy, a practice that engages listeners who might not otherwise have had much truck with black metal but often alienates those who haven’t got much time for anything else. In their short existence, Cork, Ireland’s Altar Of Plagues have unleashed a steady stream of releases that lean towards the better end of the nouveau-black metal spectrum, bringing Mogwai-esque instrumental passages, dark ambient textures, and occasional forays into hardcore’s slower, more dirge-like moments without their combinations sounding contrived.
Altar Of Plagues – Mammal (Profound Lore Records)
There’s been many a critic’s pen aflutter over the recent wave of bands who incorporate elements of black metal without really buying into the whole corpse-paint-and-shitty-recording-quality aesthetic that the genre’s clung to so strongly over the years. Some of these bands are great (Deafheaven, Skagos), some are pretty good (Wolves In The Throne Room), and some are just fucking terrible (Liturgy), but they all possess a tendency to pull from sources outside of the genre’s orthodoxy, a practice that engages listeners who might not otherwise have had much truck with black metal but often alienates those who haven’t got much time for anything else. In their short existence, Cork, Ireland’s Altar Of Plagues have unleashed a steady stream of releases that lean towards the better end of the nouveau-black metal spectrum, bringing Mogwai-esque instrumental passages, dark ambient textures, and occasional forays into hardcore’s slower, more dirge-like moments without their combinations sounding contrived.
Mammal, the band’s newest, doesn’t really vary substantially from their previous releases, and the few changes tend to hinder the album more than help it. Most noticeably, the pace tends to be far slower than on Altar Of Plague’s older albums. Which isn’t to say they don’t throw in some blastbeats from time to time, but the more mid-tempo approach keeps the album from an intensity that the band had previously harnessed to good effect. It doesn’t help that three of the album’s four songs exceed ten minutes in length, a lack of concision that does little to aid the songs. The individual parts aren’t terrible, but if the majority were played for half as long, the songs might feel less as if they’re overstaying their welcome. The production tends to be clearer on Mammal as well, an element which could be welcomed or dismissed depending on a listener’s preference for audio fidelity. On one hand, each element of the band’s sound can be more easily discerned. On the other, it undermines one of the band’s strengths: the ability to pull different source material into a cohesive roar, one with an end result greater than the individual parts.
This isn’t to say Mammal is a bad album – the band still retains many of the characteristics that made them distinctive in the first place. Atmospheric passages – the eerie introduction to “All Life Converges To Some Center” being a good example – do more than just act as interludes for the more aggressive moments, instead displaying the band’s range and ability to work with a broad sonic palette. Similarly, the use of traditional Irish “keening” (a vocal lament performed as part of Gaelic funeral rites prior to its elimination by the Catholic church) in “When The Sun Drowns In The Ocean” allows the band to connect their music to a larger tradition, imbuing it with the sort of atavistic attitude that so much black metal self-consciously tries to incorporate. Altar Of Plagues also manage this in a much more effective and affecting manner than the average black metal band’s attempt to evoke Norse heathenry through playing Viking dress-up.
Lyrically, the album as a whole ruminates on the idea of death, focusing on the inevitability, immutability, and necessity of mortality. This is a sort of personalized, internalized vision of the band’s older lyrics, which tended to emphasize decline and degradation within nature at large. “It is a familiar place that the road leads toward,” singer James Kelly howls in the album’s final song, “Forever dying and stripped of all but nothing and fed to nothing / Wide eye cannot see the beyond, the will not look upon its face / The ride to that which has no soul, the ride to nothingness.” Their vision of death is far removed from the average metal band – there is no cartoonish blood-and-guts imagery, no Pushead skulls, only the resounding sadness which can so often accompany serious deliberations on mortality. It’s transcendent without being pretentious, relatable without being dumbed down. It’s a tentative attempt to comprehend something beyond the common travails of our mortal coil – a philosophical conundrum everybody will struggle with eventually.
Over the course of their short existence, Altar Of Plagues has been able to separate themselves from both black metal traditionalists and the leagues of newer bands tampering with the existing formulas. They place themselves firmly at a convergence of influences without seeming like some sort of forced combination of styles, and express a worldview that’s well-conceived and brilliantly articulated. Elements of their newest release may not hold up as well as previous efforts, but many of their strengths are still intact. This isn’t the band’s finest hour, but it’s certainly not a bad effort.
