Longtime Southern Lord labelmates, tourmates, and metal bands Sunn 0))) and Boris seem like natural collaborators, though they approach their music with disparate intentions: Sunn 0)))'s blood-covered drone subsumes everything around it, while Boris' blend of patiently unraveling noise and fractious thrash entices and then dramatically repels an audience. With that contrast between push and pull in mind, Altar-- written and recorded largely before a joint tour last fall-- risks leaving an audience stranded in the middle by inertia.
Indeed, the second half of Altar does just that, leaving the audience adrift in left field with little direction or purpose. But, together, the first three tracks are a perfect capitulation of their conjoined aesthetics. Opener "Etna" creeps in through feedback and slowly building and shifting bass tones before a huge guitar sweep-- split between Sunn 0)))'s Greg Anderson and Boris' Takeshi-- takes charge a minute in. A veritable war of tones follows, Boris drummer Atsuo filling the low-lying space between the subterranean guitar arches with cymbal rolls. Six minutes later, the air forces-- piercing, upper-register, signature-Boris guitar attacks-- obliterate the lowly, warring miscreants, razing the drama and letting it slow burn into "N.L.T."
The follow-up-- featuring the bowed bass of Sunn 0))) collaborator Bill Herzog-- is a vibrantly bleak and texturally captivating work reminiscent of Daniel Menche. Atsuo-- the only other musician present-- splatters the canvas, lustrous edges shaped from the sound of bowed cymbals and a carefully managed gong. It's followed by Altar’s centerpiece and masterpiece, "The Sinking Belle (Blue Sheep)". "Belle" is the one track on which its players conspire to subvert outside notions of both bands. Sunn 0)))'s glacial motion is intact, as is Boris' lucid use of almost-gentle tones. But the amplifiers are turned down, and distortion is all but lost. Instead, warm analog delay lets the sound drift in plumes, and beautiful, understated slide guitars and O'Malley's careful piano create a cradle for Jesse Sykes. Here, her voice shifts and floats like the retiring wafts of blue-gray smoke from a funeral pyre at a misty dawn. It’s an exhalation, a last breath of robust beauty.
But, on the heels of such an overwhelming, unexpected triptych, Altar never recovers, essentially moving in redundant circles for 32 minutes. Three tracks either highlight the magic Sunn 0))) and Boris have crafted separately for a decade or the pitfalls that such work has avoided. The deftly fragmented chords that end "The Sinking Belle" open the door for the record's second side, but "Akuma No Kuma" is waylaid early by a harangued vocal take, an out-of-place horn fanfare, and overly involved Moog lines. Wata's eerie voice and the nebulous echo on everything in "Fried Eagle Mind" builds a paranoid sleep-state eclipsed after seven minutes by a solid sheet of guitar noise. It fades barely, slamming hard into "Bloodswamp", a 14-minute, multi-textural drone that would be an accomplishment for most other bands.
Asymmetrical and leaning, Altar isn't the metal icon its lineage would suggest: It bears neither the rapturous juggernaut geography of Sunn 0)))'s White 2 or Black One nor the transcendent overpowered amorphousness of Boris' Pink or Amplifier Worship. But it does speak of things to come, brave new directions for bands respectively referred to hitherto either as sheer sonic titans or on-off schizophrenics. Those descriptions are much too reductive, and such evidence is the onus and gift of Altar.
