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.
