Unholy Altar - Demo

The fun part about black metal is that the usually pretty serious lyrical content is delivered straight-faced by people in capes. Take, for example, genre stalwarts Satyricon. Most of Frost’s lyrics are about suicide, self-harm and general nihilism, yet he only ever sings about them in a cape.  While it’s all a bit goofy on the surface it’s also a critical part of the genre’s ethos. Through shrouding themselves artists can more fully embrace black metal’s central tenets; dragging society’s muck to the surface through sounds so vile they could never possibly be commercialized. 

Thankfully, Philly’s own Unholy Altar is able to look past the surface-level silliness and embrace capes and gauntlets galore. Delivered with a knowing wink and a healthy dose of nihilistic fury, Unholy Altar’s Demo is a little over 12-minutes of blackened punk so raw it nearly dips into noise. Unrelenting bursts of blast beats give way to machine gun, d-beat drumming evoking the legendary Darkthrone’s own fondness for quick crust punk attacks (‘Purgatory’). 

Unholy Altar, however, is not a one-trick pony. ‘Bloodless Cadaver’ hints at a band able to sway between the frenetic and the cathartic. Fury gives way to melancholy as the band flirts with a grander scale. Outward rage at a world-on-fire turns to an inward desperation as they evoke shades of Judas Iscariot and Mutiilation. 

Comparisons to such genre cornerstones are not to pigeon-hole Unholy Altar or otherwise label them as derivative of the greats. Rather it speaks to the opposite; Unholy Altar manages to achieve the rare feat of presenting a forward thinking piece of music within the context of black metal’s rich history.  In a genre full of copycats in corpse paint Unholy Altar’s Demo is a breath of fresh air and a testament to the exploratory spirit of black metal’s earliest pioneers.