Year: 2025
Label: self-released
Although Finnish Altar Of Despair have been at it for a while already, ever since 2018 in fact, to the best of my knowledge this is their first release in a physical format. The band, still unsigned, have released a self-titled album in 2024 and a few EP’s, but all digitally only. And they don’t even have a Bandcamp.
Perhaps it’s the generation gap? I guess younger generations don’t see physical releases as all that important, where I barely consider a digital-only release a release at all, especially without a Bandcamp version. Digital only is… well, it’s fake. But time’s are a-changing, and the younguns don’t think like us old farts do, I suppose.
It’s a bit of a shame really, because already the 2024 full-length was good enough to warrant release in a physical format and, by all means, label attention. Severance is better. Its five tracks present a deathcore group who’re ready to take on quite a few of their more famous and prominent colleagues.
To be honest, Severance doesn’t start off too convincingly. Opener Disconnection sounds a bit muddled, even congested. Luckily, subsequent tracks have a much clearer sound. Somehow I’ve learned to expect and even want clarity approaching sterility in deathcore; whilst Severance never approaches Lorna Shore levels of plastic sound, the first track is just too muddy and the four other tracks get it right.
The band’s take on deathcore dips into hardcore, death metal and even occasionally more alternative 90’s/early noughties styles of metal. Essentially, there’s nothing particularly original in Altar Of Despair’s style, but the brutality and heaviness is convincing.
In comparison, I feel the 2024 full-length had a bit more death metal in the sound, where Severance features more prominent elements of hardcore and grooving 90’s alternative metal. This might reduce the hardness of the music a bit, but adds dynamism and variation. Flesh Puppet, on the other hand, amps up the extreme and flirts in the direction of discordant black metal.
And Severance is very heavy. Especially the breakdowns. Of course there are breakdowns. It’s deathcore after all. And this is one of the fields where Altar Of Despair excels: theirs are crushingly heavy and neck-breaking, but not perhaps quite to the point of being ludicrous. As Psycho-Frame’s were on their brilliant debut (reviewed here).
At the end of the day, Severance proves that Altar Of Despair should by all rights be a far bigger name than their rather modest social media follower amounts suggest they are. These are good tracks, displaying an understanding of what good deathcore is made of. They are brutal, grooving, dynamic. And heavy. Maybe not always the most original, but is that such a serious flaw? Apart from the first track, Severance also sounds great: crisp and modern, but still extreme and not too sterile.
I know quite a few of ODIR’s readers are probably negatively prejucided towards deathcore. That seems to be the norm among middle aged fans of heavy music, which I assume a great many of y’all are. But there’s really no reason to be, like Severance proves. Yeah, it’s “core.” But it’s also “death.” And it certainly is extreme. And: good.
Only Death Is Real 