ALTARAGE

Basque experimental death metal behemoths Altarage hail from Bilbao, Spain and are creators of a gargantuan and absurdly crushing strain of atmospheric, abstract death metal that ever since its emergence in 2015 has reshaped the perception of extreme music as we know it, spawning legions of loyal fans and of countless imitators. Delivering otherworldly and dissonant death metal with a staggering, riff-centric weight and scale rarely before observed, Altarage first established their sonic conquest in 2015, emerging with their two-song debut demo tape, released by Sentient Ruin and Sol Y Nieve on cassette, and later by Iron Bonehead Productions on 7” EP . The demo’s release consolidated Sentient Ruin as a rising underground force to be reckoned, elevating the label to new heights, from which it never looked back. Altarage’s debut full-length album “Nihl” dropped the following year through the same exact coalition of labels (with Doomentia Records issuing a CD version), administering to the public tenfold the destruction already delivered with the demo. “Nihl” received widespread critical acclaim and made many year end best of lists, catapulting Altarage to the forefront of underground extreme metal, hailed as innovators of the abstract and dissonant death metal sub-genre. The album’s implausible heaviness and unrivaled vision gained the band a deal with Season of Mist, who issued three more albums between 2017 and 2021: 2017’s “Endinghent”, 2019’s”The Approaching Roar” and 2021’s “Succumb”, all of which received ulterior widespread critical acclaim and established the band as one of the heaviest and most visionary underground death metal acts to ever walk the earth. “Succumb”’s 21-minute closing drone/ambient track “Devorador de mundos” revealed Altarage’s increasingly evident desire for sonic renovation, and their unique drift toward experimentation and augmented artistic control. Their deal with Season of Mist ended, and the 2022 doom, drone and noise-leaning 3-track album “Sol Corrupto” followed, released on independent Spanish doom metal label Throne Records only on vinyl format, and with digital or streaming versions being completely unavailable for months afterwards to the band’s explicit demands, underlining this realigmment to the underground and to DYI creative control and working ethics. This new beginning under the effigy of artistic independence and musical renovation was then continued with a dual 2023 release: the precursor companion EP “Catarct”, and its main full-length offering “Worse Case Scenario” which followed only a couple months later, both released by Czech independent DYI label Doomentia Records. The dual-release laid out a clear path ahead: leverage complete artistic autonomy to explore all the possible manifestations and pathways of muted death metal. Influences from Godflesh, Sunn O))), Scott Walker and Swans began to penetrate the veil, arming Altarage’s implacable death metal foundation with massive loads of unpredicatability at scale. Concepts and inspirations shifted from the abstract and surreal to real-world existential burdens of the human condition, realigning the band’s sound to certain stylistic sideways observed in the worlds of industrial, post-punk and no-wave. The new direction thus laid the foundation for 2026’s “Cogwheel”, their seventh full-length album, released by Sentient Ruin and Doomentia Records, their longest and most sonically colossal release to date, and possibly, their most experimental and abysmal since “Sol Corrupto”.

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