Rating: 7.3

Country: Australia

Genre: Dark Death Metal

Record Label: Self Released

Release Date: 2008

Track list:
1. Transcending the Spectral Planes
2. Towers of Silence
3. Besiege the Walls
4. Obstinance of Being
5. Fallen Beneath Seleucid Temples

Total playing time 24:06

Band Website: Altars

Altars - Altars

Cale Schmidt - Vocals
Lewis Fischer - Guitars
Jon Dewar - Bass
Alan Cadman - Drums

When Mithras were on the Australian leg of the Forever Advancing… Legions world tour, they once jerked off in an open sewer and then forgot all about it. Little did they know that a few years down the line it would result in the birth of Altars. Dwelling amongst the sewer slime and perpetual darkness, misbegotten and deformed, Altars didn't turn out to be a replica of the shining Mithras. Their death metal music is repugnant and in spite of their royal lineage, far from the type that one would warm up to instantly. Dark, crude and extremely ugly, it is evident that Altars were influenced by The Dead [review] who until recently inhabited and ruled the sewers.

The flow of Altars' music seems greatly hampered by the thick sludge they are immersed in; the music has to laboriously waddle its way through it to come out of your speakers. Anything that Altars do, they make it look very difficult, and I reckon that's part of their grotesque charm. Somehow they manage to synchronise really well and maintain coherency in their muddled music. One needs to be attentive to get it because otherwise he is likely to tune out of their music, until of course when they invariably get around to playing their amazingly catchy slime-laden hooks that stick to the head like a starving leech, or when they indulge in playing those august Morbid Angel riffs, though it must be said with some measure of relief that Altars here don't owe as much to Morbid Angel as Mithras did on their debut album. In fact, in "Obstinance of Being" you will even find the band jerking in Corpsegrinder Cannibal Corpse style and later, tired, wallowing in the sludge.

Altars seem rather fond of pinch harmonics which they use remarkably well in the context of their suffocating bass-heavy music. It makes me fancy that an inflatable doll has drifted into the sewer, which, in the sheer darkness, they have mistook for a real woman on whom they perform desperate CPR from time to time which results in those squeaky sounds. Their leads, like Mithras', are absolutely breathtaking, particularly in their epic nine minute last song "Fallen Beneath Seleucid Temples". They tear through the darkness like rays of blinding sunlight, as though someone from above (God?) has opened a manhole, thereby creating a new dimension in their music that is conducive to otherworldly contemplation. Meanwhile, the vocalist, who is usually content with his low inarticulate growling and murmuring, tends to scream out in pain, as if the sudden brightness is making his flesh sizzle (check him out in "Towers of Silence").

It is best if Altars lead a parallel existence with the aid of their distinguishing inherent Australian death metal ugliness and don't aim to merely emulate Mithras' music, though it wouldn't be such a bad idea to take their music to the next plane as Mithras did with Worlds Beyond the Veil. That said, the production on this one is damp, murky and bloated with bass, beyond organic and much detrimental to their music - they might want to fix that a notch. Overall, this is a promising debut by Altars.

August 10th, 2008