Altari – Kröflueldar (Svart Records)
Norway’s icy peaks, Cascadia’s forests, the raging North Sea… Mother Earth’s wonders have influenced black metal for decades.
However, to take inspiration from an Icelandic volcano – which erupted nine times through the 70s and 80s – takes that concept to the next level.
And fittingly, Kröflueldar – the Krafla fires – is remarkably intense.
A sense of existential dread drifts across this album like a cloud of sulphurous gas.
Yet this is no blastbeat-fuelled BM furnace.
Altari have carved a different path to Icelandic contemporaries such as Misþyrming and Sinmara.
The jarring sonic architecture of Voivod and Virus looms large across Kröflueldar.
The urgent pulse of Killing Joke is there too.
From the swirling Djáknahrollur – surely a Jaz Coleman nightmare made flesh – to Hin eina sanna, where the band pour scalding tremolo picking over a dreamscape of burning ash, Altari play with black metal’s DNA and bend it to their will.
Much of Kröflueldar’s strange allure is down to guitarists K.R.Guðmundsson and Ó.Þ.Guðjónsson, who eschew traditional BM tones in favour of a sound more aligned to dream pop and post-punk… albeit with a more menacing edge.
Indeed, Altari’s debut could be filed under uneasy listening.
Even the album’s gentler moments – for instance when guest Gyða Margrét graces Sýrulúður with her fragile vocals – are underscored by a constant, gnawing tension.
Yet the violence building under the surface of Kröflueldar is never quite released, even by the time the stunning, near-instrumental Grafarþögn draws the album to a close. That could be frustrating… but Altari should be praised for never taking the obvious path.
Altari have taken their time…
Kröflueldar, according to the band, took nearly nine years to create.
But good things come to those who wait.
And this enthralling and unique opus shows that black metal can still be recast in new forms.
Altari photo by Olafur Bálmarsson.