### Altar Of Plagues: White tomb

#### 03/02/11 || Khlysty

If you’ve read any and all of my reviews of black metal metals, you can easily deduce that I really like it when bands abandon the olden ways of the genre and try something new –especially, when this “new” works to the band’s and the genre’s advance and advantage.

Anyway, Altar Of Plagues comes from Ireland, of all places, and plays an acidic kind of black metal, which is liberally interspersed/peppered/marinated into/sprinkled with heavy doses of almost-shoegaze melody and introspective, post-rock-isms. And if this whole thing reminds you of Wolves In The Throne Room, well, buster, just wait to see what comes next.

See, “White Tomb” is a two-parted-four-songed concept album of sorts, dealing with the destruction of the planet and the consequences of said destruction. Heavyyyyyyyyy!!! But, the fact is that, even if you don’t give a flying fuck about the subject matter, the music is quite engaging and the way the band mixes and matches its different styles and influences is spot-on.

If you want a pretty accurate description of what this album sounds like, here goes: it sounds as if a modern black metal band, after going ballistic and applying blasting and tremolo-picking and screeching for a coupla minutes, then –WHAMMO!!!- all of a sudden is replaced by “In The Absence Of Truth”-era Isis, while, at the same time, mutating into a much heavier version of GY!BE, but with a lot more nuance in the ambient parts of the super-long songs.

Is this really black metal? Well, I don’t give a fuck and so should you. “White Tomb” is heavy as all-out shit, while retaining its wild (but never out of place) experimental streak. The production is pretty raw, but never falls into unlistenability. Altar Of Plagues sets the bar pretty high for themselves and never fail to impress with their determination and creativity. This is a must-have for people who like to darken their days with smart, impressive and heavier-than-thou music.

- Information
- Released: 2009
- Label: Profound Lore
- Website: Altar Of Plagues MySpace
- Band
- J. Kelly: guitars, vocals, keyboards
- J. Spillane: guitars
- D. Condon: bass, vocals
- S. MacAnri: drums

- Tracklist
- 01. Earth: as a womb
- 02. Earth: as a furnace
- 03. Through the collapse: watchers restrained
- 04. Through the collapse: gentian truth