ninehertz

Altarage’s early days, right back to their electrifying demo, were followed by frequent comparisons to Portal, an observation since shed as they moved out on their own into their own niche of death metal, particularly from their excellent The Approaching Roar album of seven years ago onwards. This new record, out on the Sentient Ruin and Doomentia labels, pushes them further into a stratosphere belonging only to themselves.

Cogwheel is an epic, ambitious record – an hour and a quarter of death metal that is both discordant- and death-doom, but more than the sum of those sub-genres. Despite the elongated song lengths, it is an album to be taken in as a whole, whereby it can be truly viewed as a coordinated piece of art. You hear it in how songs seem to close with a minute or two of run time remaining, leaving space for ambient (or otherwise) noises, which when seen collectively give the impression of a long recording of intercepted and unidentifiable radio waves.

You get that unconventional sense from the go via a hellish noise, a toxic chugging armoured tank of thick and soupy death-doom and swirling discordant death proving a lethal concoction, especially as it comes in such large doses. The song, Peso Muerto, is alone over nine and a half minutes, such lengths that allow the songs to stretch out, breathe its foul breath, and amble along in its filth.

Songs descend into whirlwinds generated by the guitars, masking the sky, unrelenting despite their longevity, crafting as it goes such a suffocating atmosphere you lose sense of yourself within. At one point the guitars descend in scales and it feels like you’re dropping in freefall into madness with them; such a visceral experience, so tangibly impactful that the experiences are best described in such ways, where mere musical comparisons don’t suffice in characterising the sensation.

There are passages that simulate being in the path of an avalanche, others where the guitars play against each other in discordant harmony. There’s a Sunn O))) styled drone track in the middle to further discombobulate your grounding, another which takes on a cod-occult doom feel like a Candlemass death metal fever dream.

It ends with Industrial Offering, the shortest track yet still comfortably passing the seven-minute mark – a song of shimmering, pulsating guitars rising like waves, toying with your sense of balance, such is the impact on your brain and subsequently your body, creating a seasickness feel. It’s incredible really, as it is album-wide – a record that tests not only the aural but the physical boundaries of death metal and finding new mediums for enacting a punishment upon the listener. It is, as a result, utterly marvellous.