Following on from last years ‘Tides’ EP, Irish depressives Altar Of Plagues are back with second full length album ‘Mammal’ and it’s a curious beast. Musically this lot present a harsh, bleak and cinematic landscape of utter destructiveness. It either strikes as heralding the apocalypse or perhaps being the wasteland left in its aftermath. It is very much a sound of incoming disaster and end of days and as I write this the news of devastating earthquake and tsunami hitting Japan is just breaking and this draws uncomfortable parallels to this album, which I will get to later.
Once you get past the striking and interesting green artwork you are presented with four very long songs lasting around the 51 minute mark. The first of these and longest ‘Neptune Is Dead’ broods in with low electronic sounds before unrelenting and massive percussive blasts literally pummel us into submission. Huge distempered vocal roars come over the top and we have well and truly been flung into a windswept maelstrom, although one that listeners to the band should be used to by now. Maybe not quite so psychedelic but things loosen up a bit with guitars and drums slowing and one is reminded of US bands like Nachtmystium and Krallice to a certain extent. The slower melody wraps itself around you and becomes really maudlin but you are well aware that before long the track is going to fly back in and wreak total devastation, which it does admirably. It takes just shy of 19 minutes but finally after dragging us through textures of melodic dismalness and abject brutality, Neptune Is Dead! Flowing with a kind of strident guitar tolling into ‘Feather And Bone’ things again build into a bruising and punishing mid-paced affair There is lots of doom and gloom again in the slow parts of this and the song meanders away having drawn you in, gearing up to fly off the handle and spit you back out and trample on your bones.
It’s with ‘When the Sun Drowns in the Ocean’ things take an odd turn as we go to the land of The Rising Sun and the sound of Geisha singing. Slowly the instruments come in and the playing of what sounds like some traditional Japanese instruments and guitar plucking. On first few listens I found this track pointless and at over eight minutes long a bit of filler whereas the other three numbers have a lot more structure to them. I am still not sold but it does feel like a funeral epitaph on hearing today’s news and for many the sun has been drowned by the ocean. We get back into more familiar territory for concluding number ‘All Life Converges to Some Center,’ with mournful and desolate guitar tones, ghostly chants and then more drum battering into oblivion. You had by this point forgotten about vocals after not hearing them for so long which helps make their reappearance more powerful but they are used by this band almost as an added instrument to add to the overall dramatic sound.
This is a challenging listen make no mistake, like everything else AoP have done before it, it is not a friendly or an easy second album. Replacing that third track with something more in line would have possibly been a much safer option but the band are not about playing things safe and have stood for their artistry rather than listener comfort, so fair play to them. That ‘curious beast’ phrase comes up again and one wonders what on earth can come next from this ever intriguing band.
http://www.myspace.com/altarofplagues
