SHORT BUT SWEET: ALTARAGE — “MMXV”

 

I’m devoting almost all of my posts today to a series of short releases that I discovered since the end of last week, and this is the third one of those.

ALTARAGE

Altarage are a Spanish death metal band whose debut 7″ EP, MMXV, will be released by Iron Bonehead on September 4 (and a tape release is coming from Sol y Nieve/ Sentient Ruin Records). The two songs on MMXV are “Altars” and “Vortex Pyramid”.

 

 

“Altars” is a jolting, jarring, rampaging squall of distorted riffing and pounding rhythms. It’s a heavy, lashing torrent of blackened death metal with a convincingly bleak and pestilential atmosphere, accented by alien lead guitar tones and punctuated by huge grooves and demented howls.

True to its title, the beginning of “Vortex Pyramid” ably mimics the sound of a tornado materializing right next to you, and sucking everything around it into a spinning vortex of destruction. The band also segment this song with spasms of jolting groove and infiltrate the storm with traceries of exotic, frightening melody. The drumwork — already quite impressive in the first track — reaches even higher levels of speed and acrobatic agility in this one.

This is primitive, poisonous, electrifying music from a band that’s now squarely on my radar screen for the future.

A digital version of MMXV is available now on Bandcamp for those who aren’t into vinyl or tapes. The band are working on a full-length album, too, which is good news indeed.

https://altarage.bandcamp.com/releases
https://www.facebook.com/ALTARAGE

http://www.ironbonehead.de
http://www.facebook.com/IronBoneheadProductions

http://www.solynieverecords.com
https://www.facebook.com/solynieverecords