Cursed Altar has been around for a while, but they're not on Metal Archives, mainly because they prefer to release their work digitally as opposed to producing physical music. That part of Metal Archives is really obsolete. Many great bands with many digital releases never make it onto the site simply because they haven't released a physical album. That rule may have made sense back in 2002 when digital release options like Bandcamp were non-existent, but not anymore. Yet many of the users still adhere to that obsolete thinking and prefer to stick with obsolete business models, and they're downright proud of their obsolescence. I remember this one guy from Metal Archives who came onto my blog and proceeded to insult me to no end simply because I can't afford to buy physical music. What an asshole he was.
Anyway, Cursed Altar recently released their latest album As The World Survives We Will Die Off As A Moment In Time. Huh, that really long, prosaic title reminds me of the works of VerwΓΌstung. I need to stop digressing and get to the music already.
The distortion is kind of rough, but not as rough as what you can find on other obscure black metal albums. The vocals are really powerful and have both a death metal and hardcore influence to them. They're accompanied by clean vocals which provide a brilliantly stark contrast. The instruments also display this contrast. Sometimes the drums will play at a typical black metal pace. Other times they'll play at a really slow, doom-like tempo.
Same with the guitars. On the first song, they were playing in the typical tremolo fashion, albeit with a great deal more atmosphere. But on top of that was this melodic-sounding guitar, a beautiful-sounding angel contrasting with the tremolo devil. On the second song, the guitars retain their distortion, but they play slow, calm riffs. At the halfway point, they play more mid-paced black metal, but with a great amount of atmosphere. The beauty of the guitars is juxtaposed with the ugliness of the black metal rasps and croaks. The entire album is like an experiment in juxtaposition. Clean guitars juxtaposed with angry black metal vocals. Tremolo riffs juxtaposed with drone riffs. Fast rhythms juxtaposed with slow rhythms. The list goes on and on.
As I kept listening, I kept pondering the album title, As The World Survives We Will Die Off As A Moment In Time. I believe what the album is trying to say is that although we will destroy ourselves by destroying the environment, the earth will recover from all the destruction we have inflicted upon it, all the scars will be erased. Life on the earth will continue to thrive, but humans will be forever forgotten, all our monuments purged from the surface. As the title says, we are nothing more than a moment in time, and if we continue down our path, we will fall as quickly as we rose. It is up to individuals like us to keep our species from destroying itself.
This was such a thought-provoking album. The only three bands of recent memory who have really done that for me were Panopticon, Skagos, and Oskoreien. I can't wait to hear what Cursed Altar will release next.
You can download this album and all of their other albums for free at their official Bandcamp page.
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