Review
Altar Of Plagues
Teethed Glory and Injury

Often an album comes along that defies all genre constraints and challenges your own perception on life and reality. Sometimes that album makes you delve deep within the self and question your own outlooks. Teethed Glory and Injury is that album. And oh, how it ravages your being.

With Teethed Glory and Injury Altar of Plagues have created a work of huge scope that is wrought with intense physical and emotional pain. Their cathartic motives serve to bleed the soul dry via twisted concepts and punishing vibrations of sound with the introductory track “Mills” laying out their cause for all to feel, already pushing Altar of Plagues beyond their previous accomplishments and 2011s extremely well received Mammal. 

By the time the bombastic stomp of “Burnt Year” crushes your entire heart and the chances of losing your mind completely become ever more threatening, Altar of Plagues have already veered off the black metal course with the gruelling tones of “God Alone” and the rhythmic atmospheres of “A Body Shrouded.” Walls of pure sound are raised by the Irish group which aids the palpable tension that runs through this record and thrusts their anguish to the forefront by the use of James Kelly and Dave Condon’s harsh and demanding vocal lines. “God Alone” utilises new structures and sounds not yet heard from Altar of Plagues and clean, choral passages are integrated into the masses of noise giving the song a new and unnerving direction.

“Burnt Year” pulses with a heady malevolence and the terrifying vocal stance heard here is akin to collapsing constructions of untold weight whilst the beat that leads into “Twelve Was Ruin” is a heart stopping event of indescribable burden. Bittersweet and clean vocal lines of truth and honesty permeate the otherwise dirty, electronic soundscapes before a swirling mix of guitar and furious drum work forces itself into the plains of solitude. Fiery shouts of “push and release” filter through the darkness and the believability and actuality of Altar of Plagues comes across in total certainly for their cause. The purge of emotion is utterly real and you can feel it running through your veins with a passion and a hunger for the annihilation of the senses. 

Teethed Glory and Injury is a record of change and Altar of Plagues, whilst once again stepping away from the black metal blueprint, are quite definitively themselves on this release. Their music is racked with an agony that no mere mortal should ever be privy too and it’s testament to their ability to hone that despair into painful inflections of guitar and voice that it never crosses into “woe is me” territory or trite angst. Closing with “Reflection Pulse Remains” and driven cries of “I am not here,” Teethed Glory and Injury is a decidedly uncomfortable process to bear witness to, but the rewards are thousand fold and the cleansing absolute.