BLACK ALTAR & VULTURE LORD - Deathiah Manifesto Split
Odium Records
This is the fourth split release by black metal artists I've had the luxury of checking out in the past four to five weeks now. some of those did not fair so well in my opinion. But here we have two bands of which one I know very well and the other I'm slightly familiar with.
For starters we have BLACK ALTAR and if you're into Polish black metal then Shadow (their vocalist and mastermind) along with whoever else he has in the band now are pretty much a household name. I got into em back in 2008 with their Death Fanaticism full length. Since then Shadow and company have settled on just doing short form releases (aka: splits and an EP). We're still waiting for that new full length Shadow.
So on this one BLACK ALTAR contributes four cuts unfortunately one's an instro/spoken word incantation intro and the other is an outro. Fans understand the Shadow loves his ominous introductions. As far as the two proper tracks go this is standard melodic second wave BM. It's what you'd expect from BLACK ALTAR but unfortunately after two decent tracks you want a whole lot more, yeah like a full length's worth more.
VULTURE LORD is a Norwegian act I'm familiar with mainly because they were a side band of guitarist/vocalist Trondr Nefas. I was already a fan of Trondr while he was in URGEHAL and BEASTCRAFT. Unfortunately he passed away in 2012 so the band pretty much was on hold as far as putting out any new material. That hiatus ended last year when the revamped line-up came out with the full length Desecration Rite, which is also on Odium Records.
So the genre tagline on VULTURE LORD is blackened thrash. But it's kinda more than that. I mean think about it. You've got band members who were in such well known BM acts as BEASTCRAFT, URGEHAL, ENDEZZMA, ORCUSTUS, CARPATHIAN FOREST, and that's just a few names dropped. Sure sound-wise it's thrash based at times but not in the generic sense.
Of course vocalist Sorath Northgrove, the sole original member, has a cool voice. He's one part blackened savage and one part mean SOB behind the mic. There's great fast paced riffs which you would expect in Norwegian BM. Big surprise are the cool metal soloing shots taken. All in all three of their four cuts on here rip you wide open. Their fourth cut, "Usurper, Thy Name Is Death" is pretty much an instro soundtrack cut which to me is a throwaway song.
So who wins this black metal bout? Ah I think this is an even split. I'm bias for BLACK ALTAR because anything they put out is good for me. As for VULTURE LORD, hey they're an added bonus to this split. Check em out and get their full length from last year. The overall winner is you the black metal fan who'll pick this up.
https://www.label.odiumrecords.com/
LISTEN HERE:
https://blackaltar.bandcamp.com/
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