Skip to main content

Charnel Altar – Demo


Charnel Altar – Demo
January 2019 – Unsigned



Charnel Altar has been on my list for a month, and I assume has caught the eye of both Blood Harvest Records and Dark Descent Records. A thick, heavy slab of a demo, proving once again that the Aussie underground scene easily rivals legends like Florida. With a singer reminiscent of Ethan McCarthy (Primitive Man, Vermin Womb), a guitar tone that could grind stone to dust and melodies evil enough to frighten the devil, Charnel Altar only has to put out a full-length to grow a cult following from the dirty death metal audience.

If you've heard anything put out by Blood Harvest or Dark Descent, you know the one trope of the genre that's left out – blistering speed. Mid-tempo at best, the demo sometimes flirts with death/doom, most notably during Acephalic Worms, a dirge of the damned worthy of being played in death row. The muffled mix reinforces the whole dirty, underground aesthetic – kick drums sound like the feel of being punched in the face, and the riffs might as well have been recorded in the hellish landscape they evoke, while bass slides emphasize the insanity. When there's only so much one can say about composition in such a record, the small details are where it counts.

The people at Resonance Sound Studios, responsible for mastering the demo, are no greenhorns. Having worked for Profound Lore, Dark Descent and Redefining Darkness, they've almost set a path for Charnel Altar, soon to be joining the big boys club – after all, they passed their initiation with flying colours – blood, sweat and tears. The cover art is fitting as well, a lumbering mass of dripping flesh, hanging from bone in the most sickening way.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

DSKNT – PhSPHR Entropy

DSKNT – PhSPHR Entropy Sentient Ruin Records – 2017 DSKNT has been active since 2013, and somehow I only discovered them recently. As a fan of catastrophic black metal à la Deathspell Omega or Plebeian Grandstand, I was delighted to find another band in the relatively barren field of good avant garde black metal. The album kicks off with the best kind of strange, unnerving riff that sends a warning to the listener – you're in for a project with greater amplitude than most. Almost all of the riffs, excluding one or two in the latter portion of the record, have been soaked in the bath of avant garde, dripping with experimentation. Not scared of narrative composition, giving us a trip into his strange maze of a mind, Asknt creates sinuous riffs, with jagged edges and unnatural angles, but with more focus on the sinues and flow than similar artists, who often go for a slightly sharper aesthetic. There are moments of clarity, descents into madness, and long trips across ble...
Post a Comment
Read more

Grime - Live

Grime Live – Oct. 2017 The air is heavy, the lights are dim, and the conversations skittle away, hiding in the corners as Grime takes to the stage. Eyes up and hair down, I knew we were in for something good. Grime, the italian sludge act, released their first album in 2013 on the well-known Mordgrimm records. They might be the best-named band I can think of – the unclean buzz of the strings and damp mix of instruments give off a filthy, pock-marked sound, the kind you'd hear from scraping a sewer floor. I didn't know of them until their 2015 record, Circle of Molesters, but they're the kind of band who can do no wrong. The first note hit, and the bass shook me in unholy ways. After staggering a few steps back, I looked up at the stage and saw some of the best lighting since Messuggah. A white backdrop, searchlight-style movement carving the silhouettes of Grime into my retina. Marco, lead guitar, was spectacular in his theatrics. Doubling over in rage and p...
Post a Comment
Read more

Hexenoise – II

Hexenoise – II March 2019 – Unsigned After the excellent catastrophic sludge monolith that was Heavy Drugs Smashed Amps, Hexendrone began showing signs of veering straight off the cliff and free-fall into the jagged forest of noise, having recorded a split with B ol', a mysterious experimental act whose only proof of existence is their presence in said split. A sharp-eyed reader might notice Hexendrone not having the same name on this record. Indeed, the Russians may have wanted to clearly separate both sounds without creating an entirely new project, hence the Hexenoise and Hexendrone entities. Their approach to sludge always noisy and approximative, yet II displays remarkable forethought and composition given the genre. Acoustic drums accompany the slow, intangible Go Home!, giving it structure and giving me something to hold on to while my lungs and head are crushed. A vice made of guitar distortion and bass rumble, feeding into an ever-growing drone, constrict...
Post a Comment
Read more