ALTARAGE
Spanish misanthropists hit negative mass
One of underground metal’s most enduring preoccupations is with the creation of music that somehow conjures new, darker shades of black. As death metal grinds inexorably forward, no one is making music as wilfully terrifying and sonically dense as Bilbao’s Altarage. Swiftly following up their remorselessly bleak 2016 debut Nihl with Endinghent, an even more devastating collection of hellish hypno-death, the Spaniards are clearly not here to spread peace and love.
“This world is going down the drain every new minute and you can do nothing,” says a nameless representative. “There’s no hope! Effectively, this is a purge. There is no good and evil, just a long walk to the end, along the monochromatic Eksis.”
Although motivated by dismay at the state of humanity and bereft of optimism, Altarage are doing some bold and exciting things with death metal. Endinghent shares as much DNA with Meshuggah’s polyrhythmic squall as they do with Portal or Ulcerate, and it’s within that blurring of subgenre boundaries that the true extremity and quasi-Lovecraftian surrealism of the band’s sound emerges.
“We didn’t have a masterplan. We aimed to do something we would be pleased with, moulding the songs until we got the end result. The sound is just us. There are flickers of dark light in the music for sure. Pitch-black, shitty albums are legion. Our language is more diverse than that, retaining the bizarre brutality intact.”
Their vision may be wholly misanthropic, but there is evidence in Altarage’s music that a positive energy is coursing through their veins. If it is possible to find true catharsis through heavy music, and liberation from life’s slow trudge towards the abyss, Altarage are far closer to unearthing it than most. With a third album already written, this journey through Hell is only just beginning. Be afraid, by all means, but be thrilled too.
“We hope to be going out there to spit this venom everywhere,” they avow. “To spread the plague wherever is possible.”