Two years ago, Altar of Plagues frontman James Kelly talked about his band’s enormous black metal landscapes as though his Irish trio played free jazz: The group, he said, would lay dormant for extended periods and then work obsessively in an isolated, caffeine-fueled state for two-week bursts, using that sporadic schedule to create music that capitalized more on feeling than technicality. “With us, it’s almost let it write itself. That allows us to engage with it more, too, because it’s so repetitive,” Kelly said, explaining the oblong and unordinary structures of the four massive songs on Mammal, the band’s second LP. “We just let it grow.” Kelly also called Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew the most inspirational music he’d ever heard, compared Arvo Pärt to Emperor, mentioned his excellent muted dance productions under the name Wife, and called jazz “fire from the soul.”Kelly’s references and enthusiasms did not adhere at all to any metal-dude stereotypes, and to an extent, that’s long been the fount of intrigue at the center of Altar of Plague’s music. Their post-metal, if one must call it that, took unexpected turns, with moments of ruthless industrial slink or minimal improvisations that turned suddenly to mournful throat signing embedded within more standard forms of aggression. They could roar, too, working themselves into sustained roils that gave any accusations of hipster or dilettante metal a direct and devastating gut punch.
Teethed Glory and Injury, the third LP from Altar of Plagues, is again intended to do exactly that but in a much different way than before. “I just found that the type of black metal we were being associated with was not exciting to me anymore,” Kelly told Terrorizer in an in-studio interview earlier this year. “What a few years ago was a very exciting and promising template for a genre … has also just been watered down.” Both Mammal and 2009’s White Tomb comprised just four tracks each, with the shortest pushing past the eight-minute mark. But Altar of Plagues pushes the action back toward the center of the song on Teethed Glory, a nine-piece set that favors a more immediate four-to-five minute range. This is a dense and demanding record, where fragments of black metal slam into shards of industrial throb, where sheets of noise work alongside diaphanous electronics. Moments suggest the heyday of Touch and Go Records and, alternately, Nine Inch Nails in Trent Reznor’s commanding prime or Swans at their vitriolic apex. Several electronic impasses are as dense as those of Altar of Plague cohorts the Haxan Cloak, while others could pass as tinted Boards of Canada fragments.
If that matrix of touchstones sounds intriguing, it often is; indeed, with Teethed Glory and Injury, Kelly’s reputation as an avid and eclectic listener feels fully represented by the music his band makes. However, the other alluring aspect of Altar of Plague’s music-- the jazz-like ease with which it was made and, consequently, unfolded-- has almost altogether disappeared. Every moment of Teethed Glory feels like a deliberate plot point, built to fly squarely in the face of any expectations for this brand of aggrandized heaviness. The omission of that free-and-easy mentality isn’t a problem because of the songs’ relative brevity; rather, the pieces within Teethed Glory often feel forced together, coerced into collisions that don’t meld the components so much as stack them side by side.
Altar of Plagues overthinks and overstuffs here, creating a gauntlet that defaces its own delight. “Burnt Year”, for instance, opens with an almost phosphorescent surge of distorted guitar and bass thrum, funneling into a belligerent, howl-along march that suggests the work of Ministry. By song’s end, Altar of Plagues has ripped through an atavistic black metal sprint, dipped into dreamy moments of rest and ultimately arrived at an instrumental surge that suggests the rocky peaks of Pelican. On “A Body Shrouded”, Altar of Plagues' seesaw between post-punk simmer and doom-like pounce adulterates both aspects. Individually, they’re interesting, but taken together, they simply feel claustrophobic. It’s a problem that hounds most of Teethed Glory, a string of compelling parts that does not compel as a whole
The album’s most successful songs are also its most fully synthesized: “Twelve was Ruin”, for instance, pairs Kelly’s blossoming electronic touch to Altar of Plagues' previous sense of sprawl and current sense of attack. It builds through icy keyboards and scythe-shaped guitars, culminating in a coda that’s urgent and intricate, two qualities that often combat one another throughout Teethed Glory. And the record’s first single, “God Alone”, is written so well that its most brutal stretches dovetail perfectly with its more delicate moments. It all cascades into a chorus that sounds as soft as Alcest but as savage as Immortal.
Though Teethed Glory and Injury doesn’t deliver the systemic and singular rupture Kelly and his band might have intended, it should not diminish the excitement for Altar of Plagues’ revolutionary compulsion. If anything, the trio have proven here that they’re driven only by the need to subvert and shock, to weld rather traditional ideas into strange new hybrids. The possibilities that Teethed Glory and Injury present are more interesting than the album itself--and, really, more interesting than the possibilities presented by any Altar of Plagues music to date. Maybe next time, they’ll write themselves into reality. - Grayson Currin, Pitchfork, http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/17854-altar-of-plagues-teethed-glory-and-injury/
Instrumental introductory tracks have been a staple of black metal albums since Bathory opened their self-titled début with the sound of a clock tower chiming in the northern wind while thunder rumbled ominously in the distance. The best tracks set the mood for the album to follow, truly opening it, like “Al Svartr” or “Ceasuri Rele.” The worst are explorations in ridiculous self-indulgence, like the symphonic bombast that opens every Cradle of Filth album or the pitch-shifted “Satan vocals” of early Teutonic black-thrash. Many of the more self-aware modern black metal bands have eschewed the instrumental intro, choosing instead to dive straight into the music that we’ve come to hear. Altar of Plagues has always been one of those bands, until now. Fortunately, the intro to Teethed Glory & Injury is among the best.
“Mills” is stuffed full of guitar feedback that sounds more like a violin being tortured to death. The track contains a remarkable amount of electronic noise and some intentionally rough loops that give the impression of the great gears and wheels of industry grinding away in Ireland. The highlight of the song, however, is a synthesized bass which we hear fold in upon itself from a beautiful sine wave to an excruciatingly passionate growl that transitions seamlessly into the pulsing guitars of “God Alone,” the first single. It is that pulse that defines this album, and anchors it to the work that Altar of Plagues has done in the past. It isn’t the cold 0/1 dichotomy of the modern digital world. It is a pulse; heart and lungs. A living thing. A seething eroticism. It slows and accelerates; it strengthens and weakens. It sometimes seems to fade away. But it is there, always, from “Mills” through the descriptively named album closer “Reflection Pulse Remains.”
Teethed Glory & Injury is only the Irish trio’s third full length, but their three EPs are each about thirty-five minutes long, which is six minutes longer than the average Anaal Nathrakh release, and even the song they released as a split with Year of No Light was over sixteen minutes. Simply put, Altar of Plagues has put out a lot of material since forming in 2006, and their sound has been well established. On Teethed Glory, however, Altar of Plagues seems to abandon everything that they’ve spent seven years perfecting. Gone is the four-song structure, gone are the quarter-hour plus track lengths. Gone even is the green-and-brown earth-tone palate that defined the band both visually and aurally. Instead we receive the stark black-and-white aesthetic of the modern dancer, the sterile landscape of the concrete jungle, and the thrum of electronic machinery. And yet, the signature sound of Altar of Plagues is still present. The distinctly organic wash of electric guitars that dominated their previous albums shines through the machinery and the passion and talent of the band has only increased.
“God Alone,” for which the band created the greatest metal music video since Triptykon’s “Shatter,” fully displays Altar’s new sound. The guitars and bass of James Kelly and Dave Condon have a wonderful growl to them that can only be achieved by real analogue tube amps, and they shriek and pulse with an alarm clock ferocity at times reminiscent of “Future Breed Machine” and at other times glide as smooth as glass. “God Alone” is an infectious song that you will not be able to get it out of your head. It isn’t the traditional frostbitten forests of the Norwegian TRVE, or even the verdant greenery of Altar of Plagues’ previous work. This new sound is distinctly urban and uniquely human. And lest you think that the introduction of heavy electronic samples would have in some way degraded the drums in some way, Johnny King serves up his most staggering performance yet, often infusing passages with polyrhythmic complexity that tears against the pulse of the album.
Both Kelly and Condon lend their voices to the music with a passionate dynamic that is missing from much of modern black metal. The clean vocals, although sparse, are delivered in waves that sound almost like another instrument, and not vocals expressing a message. This nebulous peace contrasts sharply with the harsh vocals, which could be nothing other than a message. Altar of Plagues has spent years singing about Mother Earth’s response to man. Now they’ve turned their attention to the men in their concrete cities, bereft of the care of their Mother. I can imagine that Kelly’s eyes must be bulging out of his head while he delivers the tortured lines “I watched my son buried” in “Burnt Year.”
Even though Altar of Plagues chose to divide Teethed Glory & Injury into nine separate tracks, it's more natural to view the the album as a complete work rather than as individual songs. The album is full of highlights, from the drum solo underneath a floor-shaking synth bass in “A Body Shrouded” to the octave-shifted guitars that create a near-lullaby feeling in “A Remedy and a Fever,” to the circular maelstrom of “Scald Scar of Water,” to the almost hardstyle breakdown in “Refection Pulse Remains,” Teethed Glory & Injury fascinates and astonishes. Don’t let this one just fade into the background. Sit down and take the fifty minutes to experience everything it has to offer, start to finish.
But still, a ten? It was slightly over a month ago that I gave a perfect score to Aosoth's Arrow In Heart, but the album just hit the streets two weeks ago. Perhaps I risk my credibility here by rating two albums so highly in such quick succession, and people will start saying "Oh, just give him some weird black metal. He'll love it." I don't think I'm that easy, though. After twenty years, it takes a lot to do something new within the confines of the genre. Dodecahedron did it, Blut Aus Nord tried it, but left the genre completely to do so. Even fewer bands do so flawlessly. Altar of Plagues is not the first band to add synthesizers, syncopation, and electronic manipulation to black metal, but the way in which they do it is unlike Emperor or Deathspell Omega or Aborym. If Aosoth is the flagbearer for TRVE Satanic black metal, Altar of Plagues is the humanist, stripping away fantasy and evil posturing to say "this music describes our daily lives."
Altar of Plagues realized that they had pushed their old sound to perfection with Mammal and made the bold choice to turn in an entirely new direction. Their ability to so evolve has probably only been matched by Blut Aus Nord, and that only because they’ve built a career around reinventing themselves. By introducing electronic elements and a never-ending pulse to their music, Altar of Plagues has crafted their most human record yet. Be moved. - Keith Ross, Last Rites, http://lastrit.es/reviews/6998/altar-of-plagues-teethed-glory---injury#sthash.egfAtaeS.dpuf