It was a typically winter’s day in Holland: the sun was shining and there were almost no clouds up in the sky. I set foot to my front door to pick up the mail and found a nice little envelope on my door step. I went into the living room and opened my cd-player, because I knew it was a new cd to review. When I saw the disc, I spontaneously began to laugh. “Black Altar? What the fuck”, those were the first couple of words I uttered. It’s such a hilarious name, I couldn’t believe it. I felt sorry already for the three “Guardians Ov Black Altar”, because with such a name the music must suck too. Well, how wrong was I?!

The “Elite Holocaust Horror Black Metal” that Shadow, Lord von Skaven and Antichrist (yeah I know, these guys are really bad in coming up with names) make is BRUTAL! It’s aggressive, it’s loud and it’s fast; just like black metal is supposed to be.

But unlike most of the black metal bands, Black Altar has a very good vocalist (I don’t dare to call him a singer). His “demon voices” are so deep and intense, it’s almost frightening.

After a demo and an EP this is a very promising debut album. Although the artwork is kind of pathetic (a lot of black, skulls, candles and corpse paint), the album is really great. And as a bonus there is a multimedia part on the disc which contains 2 video clips.