Musical sensibilities and affinities vary, even among people like the denizens of this site for whom extreme metal is their bread and butter.
Depending on the time of day and the frame of mood, you might want to become engrossed in elaborate melodies, or have your brain twisted into knots by high-speed intricacy, or become scorched by malignant blackened conflagrations, or have your soul pulled into a chasm of gloom and despair.
But every now and then there’s a visceral need to just be bludgeoned senseless and viciously butchered in the most primitive, ruthless, and electrifying way possible. At those times, Altar of Gore‘s new album Litanies Of The Unceasing Agonies will be there to feed that need.
Those listeners who have already encountered this New Jersey black/death band’s debut album Obscure & Obscene Gods (2020) or the project’s demos and splits that have surfaced since 2017 are well aware that Acolyte Of The Foul Ones (the person behind the project) is uninterested to taking prisoners. As accurately portrayed by the publicists for Nameless Grave Records, which will release the new album on May 17th: “No keyboards, no technicality, no decency, no humanity… Altar of Gore is the primal urge to kill, set to music”.
On the new album Alter of Gore sets the stage for the carnage to come with an intro track, whose hulking hostility and slashing savagery quickly lays down the blueprint, replete with foul tuning, skull-cracking drumwork, and the kind of screaming guitar solo that’s so berserk it raises goosebumps on a listener’s flesh.
The only principal ingredient missing from that intro track arrives soon after — when the reverberating tones of monstrous gutturals and crazed howls surface within the churning paroxysm of “Excoriation Prayers”.
Once again, the guitar-leads sound like a mad wraith screeching in its convulsions, and chaos reigns in the full-throttle assaults of that song. The livid drums sounds like ball bearings rattling at high speed within your skull and the riffing channels a roiling cesspool of filth — when it’s not lurching like some stinking, shaggy beast.
The word “dynamism” is derived from the Greek word dúnamis, which means “power” – the same word that’s the root of “dynamo” and “dynamite”. And as you’ll discover from the rest of the songs on the new album, all those words apply to Altar of Gore‘s music.
Their movements are dynamic, veering from massive heaving stomps to churning froths and outbursts of delirious violence that get the adrenaline flowing and muscles twitching, and while Altar of Gore doesn’t have much use for melody, it does have the capacity to spin up the music like a big turbine delivering enormous voltage — and it’s damned explosive too.
The sharp rattle and pop of the snare has a lot to do with the galvanizing effects of the music, especially when it’s going flat out (the drumming really is relentlessly jaw-dropping), and it contrasts dramatically with the immensity of the low-end decibels, the gutting, near-atonal ugliness of the riffage, and the shrill shrieking of those lunatic guitar-leads (which also sometimes resemble the agonized wailing of a torture victim).
At the end, with the closing title track, Altar of Gore also create a frighteningly supernatural and soul-suffocating experience, bent on choking the life out of the listener — before one final bout of brute-force bludgeoning and ravenous evisceration.
And with that we’ll leave you to the monstrous ministrations and unceasing agonies of Alter of Gore‘s new album — and a comment from Acolyte of the Foul Ones: “At long last, the Litanies are uttered! Thanks to those who helped to make it a reality, and to all the maniacs around the world who continue to support this project.”
Acolyte of the Foul Ones was responsible for all music and lyrics on the new album, as well as all instrumentation and vocals — except guitar leads which were performed by Joe Aversario.
Litanies Of The Unceasing Agonies was recorded at Studio D-10, in New Brunswick, NJ. It was engineered and mixed by Acolyte of the Foul Ones, mastered by Dan Lowndes at Resonance Sound Studios, and completed with macabre artwork by Taylor Smith (Coven ‘Zine).
Nameless Grave will release the album on LP, CD, and digital formats this Friday, May 17th. Preorders are available at the Nameless Grave Records webshop and Bandcamp via the links below. A cassette version is forthcoming via NVNM (Nihil Verum Nisi Mors), the band’s collective/label.
It’s recommended for fans of Archgoat, Impetigo, Demoncy, and Mortician.
PRE-ORDER:
https://namelessgraverecords.com/
https://altarofgore.bandcamp.com/album/litanies-of-the-unceasing-agonies
ALTAR OF GORE:
https://altarofgore.bandcamp.com
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