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Altar > Provoke > Reviews
Altar - Provoke

Some decent death/thrash - 80%

CrystalMountain, January 24th, 2005

Altar are a band I don't know much about, apparently they stirred up quite a bit of controversy for their un-relentless anti-Chrstian themes. Judging by their lyrics it's easy to see why, these guys obviously don't like Christianity. Musically I think they are like Demolition Hammer meets Master of Puppets-era Metallica. Pretty much old school thrash with growled vocals, and some intense death metal moments.

A buddy of mine found this album by accident, and recommended it to me. I was rather impressed, the production is awesome, heavy as fuck. The drums are a bit loud at times, but the guitars sound amazing. I mean the drummer is definetly awesome, but some timeshe over powers the other instruments way too much.

Pretty much every song is solid, no filler at all. Notable tracks include:

"Route 666" is catchy as hell, it doesn't really sound like death metal, or thrash for that matter it's just....Altar. "W.E.B." has a really cool, eerie vibe going on during the verses, that guitar sounds awesome. But the song kinda meanders on too long for it's own good. "Silent Force" has a nice pounding bass rythym, and almost sounds like a Prong song, some nice thrashy moments and a melodic chorus.

"Wrong Night" is fast and aggressive, and really catchy. Though they really over-do that harmonic riff that comes in at about 1:10. "Wated World" is easily the best song on here. One can't helped but be reminded of old Metallica during that intro, some nice melodic soloing, then bam stomp on the distortion. That riff at 1:04, when both guitars come in, man that's awesome, simple yet very effective. This dude sounds really pissed off in the verses, though the bass drum is too loud. A nice Hammet-style solo is found near the end, really catchy.

"Fast as a Shark" is a pretty nice cover, musically it's pretty similar to the original. And the vocalist doesn't butcher the song, he just sounds really angry and you can actually understand him. The solo is done perfect.

So in closing, it's a suprisingly good album. Nothing new or groundbreaking, if you like death/thrash I would definetly check it out. Maybe too "melodic" for some peoples liking, but there's plenty of heavy as riffing to go around.