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Having seen Watain live tonight – an enjoyable but predictable experience – and listening to Altar of Plagues right now, I’m convinced that black metal’s balance of power has tipped away from Scandinavia. There’s no resulting epicenter – the Internet is leveling regional idiosyncrasies with the force of a trillion downloads – but there’s the US, Canada, France, Eastern Europe…and now Ireland.
Twisted Structures Against the Sun (excerpt)With Fire in Our Veins We Drown in Light (excerpt)
Altar of Plagues sound like a product of the Internet, not Hibernia. It’s impossible to out-roots compatriots Primordial, however, so they might as well look forward. Their big influence is post-metal, particularly in the Isis-esque clean tones. Post-metal and black metal have gone steady for a while, but unlike, say, Wolves in the Throne Room, Altar of Plagues are quite willing to disturb black metal’s trance state with unorthodox elements – multihued growls, female screams, clean singing, dots of electronics. These diversions are most welcome; as show after black metal show has proven, blastbeats played through shit PA’s get boring fast. It’s so exciting not to know what’s around the corner.
This tantalizing sentence is on Thou’s site: “And soon we’ll start working on the summer 2009 tour of Scandinavia, the UK (with Moloch), and Ireland (with Altar of Plagues).” And Altar of Plagues lists Lake of Blood (whom I reviewed here) in their Top 8! The underground weaves wonderful webs.
A full-length is due out on Profound Lore next year. (It’s hard to believe that Sol is unsigned, since it trounces most of this year’s black metal.) In the meantime, Sol is available from Altar of Plagues via their MySpace.
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Trolls vs. Leprechauns ist krieg.
I’m actually so, so, so, so sick of those “post-rock” (or “post-” whatever) sounds filtering into black metal (and other types of metal- or hard-based music) lately just because it’s getting WAY too overdone.
However, THIS is fucking AWESOME, and does NOT built off of the same types of boring “post-rock” crap that most other bands experiment with at all. VERY cool…
bacon and aversionline – agreed on all counts. andrew, i’m quite sick of post-rock also, but i think that’s due to practitioners not wanting to break the mold rather than any fault with the core ingredients.
Watain’s “predictability” leads you to the conclusion that Scandinavia is kaput? Cos…
When I rent a Winders flick, I know exactly what I’m getting. But it doesn’t render German cinema impotent.
No, it was just a mental tipping point. I still believe in the ability of black metal to surprise, and feel that element to be crucial to the genre. But when Scandinavia’s leading lights bring not blitzkrieg but a well-orchestrated underground version of KISS, I can’t help but feel that the inspiration has gone elsewhere.
They certainly brought blitzkrieg when I saw them last. I suppose I shall see.
And of all the bogus acts today to compare Kiss to, Watain has got to be the last.
Good find, Cosmo. Between Krallice and Altar of Plagues, Profound Lore definitely has a lock on the best new black metal bands working off of that wide-screen Weakling template.