Following the acclaimed Of Ash and Dying Light split album of 2015, Canadian Prairies doom metal juggernaut Altars of Grief is back with Iris, a second full length album of devastating proportions. This new blackened doom offering introduces new levels of dynamics and textures, and while it is the more accomplished work from the Saskatchewan band to date, it also carries the darkness and light personality that Altars of Grief developed since 2013. On Iris, melancholy and storytelling reaches new depths of beauty and sorrow. Containing equal appeal and oppression in its aesthetic, this new album will raise the bar for Canadian Doom-Death.
A few weeks ago, we premiered the track "Voices of Winter", a fitting representation of Altars of Grief's light and dark duality which has come to perfectly encapsulate this Prairie Doom Metal entity. Today, in partnership with
No Clean Singing, we present the pernicious track "Desolation". With its unrelenting and cascading sound of unyielding anxiety and grief, "Desolation" captures the more Blackened sound in Altars of Grief's palette.
From No Clean Singing's article:
As an emotional experience, desolation can take different forms, ranging from the kind of devastating collapse that leaves you hollowed out and numb, to a grief so severe that it’s wrenching and raging. In this Altars of Grief song, those experiences seem to be entwined. At the outset it builds to a swelling roar of sound, a combination of powerful blasting drums, rapid-fire spiraling bass notes, and throat-splitting vocal extremity. There is an edge of tension in the turmoil of the music — and then the tension suddenly breaks when clean vocals come in, and the mood of the music moves in a more soulful but still deeply sorrowful direction.
The song resumes its powerful surge, but then abruptly collapses into a slow, doomed stomp, while the vocalist shrieks the pain of anguish. And one more musical shade of sorrow lies ahead, one that will get heads moving from the darting riff and tumbling drum beats, but one that will also remind you, through a soulful dual-guitar solo, that this is a grief that won’t go away.
Iris will be presented in a gorgeous 4-panel digipack with artwork from the acclaimed artist Travis Smith [
Seempieces] (Katatonia, Opeth, Anathema). The cover artwork brilliantly depicts Iris’ final moments as she kneels before the winter beset church and embraces her fate.
For fans of Woods of Ypres, Adora Vivos, October Tide, and Swallow the Sun.
