It would have to be an ambitious and confident band that would release as its debut album a four-movement lament of Nature's destruction (possibly self-destruction or one initiated by human activities) yet Altar of Plagues has done this and "White Tomb" is a great achievement. Right from the word "go", the AoP musicians plunge straight into their mix of angry and sharp-edged black metal and melodic, almost soulful rock with energy, enthusiasm and heartfelt belief in their cause, and continue in this way right through to the album's end fifty minutes later. Each track is a roller coaster ride through sections of blasting, thrilling noisy BM with tireless drumming, moments of thoughtful melancholy demonstrated on one lonely guitar rumble, passages where the music coasts along at an easy pace with all instruments appearing to be calm yet under a testy mood, and periods where an actual scene of prayer or a ritual is being enacted in voice and sound.
The musicians are a tight unit and handle the flow of music and the build-up and release of tension well in each track. Fluttering BM guitar tones that ascend to a peak in "Earth - As a Furnace" are brought down steadily to quiet and compressed quivering note some time in the 9th or 10th minute which is then subjected to a series of distorted chiming guitar noes while an anguished voice wails a prayer in vain. Amazing how drama and atmosphere can be created just with the use of guitars, bass, percussion and space without the band having to rely on keyboards, studio equipment, gadgets or other equipment to create a definite ambience in the way, say, Wolves in the Throne Room who may share similar sentiments with AoP might do.
Seems to me that the music should be more or less continuous and the division into four tracks is mainly for listener convenience as the tracks are not very distinct from one another and a major turning point that for me is the Point of No Return comes in the third minuted of track 3 where the music turns theatrical with hammer falls of guitar and a declamatory witchy vocal that might be carrying out a judgement. An extended period of quiet where all activity condenses into a barely-there rumble that then expands into a shrill drone and then a passage of vibrato BM guitar makes for one of the most operatic moments of the album.
You expect the final track to have it all - passion, drama, sorrow, some kind of revelation - and it does though the music is more restrained than it would be after all that has come before it. All the emotion is channelled into the details of the riffing and melodies as the musicians wind they way through and the climax when it arrives appears muted as if it's really an anti-climax, very quick and quiet and fading away as fast as it comes.
In the space of less than an hour AoP create a drama of the collapse of Nature which brings down with it human civilisation as it currently is. The end when it comes can be a surprise - I guess I shouldn't tell you what I think the ending is, it's like telling you the plot of a movie when you haven't yet seen it but then this is my interpretation out of many that will appear here and my version may be completely skew-whiff and not at all what the band intends to say - but it seems we all fade away, lights out without any noise or protest on our part. It's remarkable how AoP sculpt this drama with the minimum of instrumentation and effects, relying on their technical ability, imagination and confidence in themselves and as a unit. Most other people would call on synth effects, sampling, field recordings or elements of other music genres to achieve something similar. Not that I have anything against extra trimmings - indeed, AoP could have added such extras to heighten emotion and tension without tipping the whole thing into something kitschy that would quickly date the music, and such effects could serve to individualise the tracks and make them more listener-friendly.
What a follow-up album will be like, I'm too scared to guess - there'll be high expectations riding on it and unless the band does something completely different (like an album of all-acoustic black folk), the second album, despite having good music and intentions, is sure to be judged harshly and found wanting against the debut.