Youth Against Christ

In my humble opinion, this was a great promising debut back in 1994; although I haven't been a big fan of Altar after this release, I think this is the best album of their career. The album starts with a short intro, some church bells tolling with an overdubbed voice talking about our sins, Hell and the Almighty, just before the band bursts in his antichristian rage. Regarding this, I can't remember any other band than Deicide as even more antichristian as Altar, back in those days. Indeed, all the lyrics in this album show a very intense hatred towards Christ and Christianity, God and religion, which may add more attractiveness to some listeners

I have always found this album's title pretty funny, it kinda sounds like a NGO: Youth Against Racism, Youth Against Intolerance, Youth Against Christ... Anyway, its contents is not funny at all; besides all the hate to Christianity mentioned before, their sound is pretty brutal, aggressive and merciless. Some bands came to my mind when I first heard this album: Deicide, Sinister, Malevolent Creation and old Gorefest, to name a few.

Vocals are not the typical death metal low grunts. Vocalist Edwin Kelder has a raspy aggressive voice, and surely he does grunts and growls, but that's not the only vocal technique, he also makes some whispers calling Satan on 'Hypochristianity', and some low-pitched clean vocals on 'Divorced from God', which sound quite operatic, and remind me of some Dani Filth-oriented.

One thing I find quite interesting in this album is the fact that they don't encase themselves permanently in a determined speed, and can combine their varied range of speed on each track. Of course they can play pretty fast, but they also have nice tempo changes, some slower nearly doomy sections (not reaching their country-mates Asphyx in slowness and doomyness though), other mid-paced sections and a little faster heavy parts, along with the aforementioned pretty fast sections and other interludes played really fast. Even though it's not the fastest band ever, they do their job rightly. At this point, drummer has a lot to do with it, keeping the perfect timing in the different sections throughout the album.

Guitars sound quite crunchy, grubbing and highly distorted, and riffs are mostly palm-muted, with little harmonics. Some leads here and there add a light melodic touch, and solos are usually played at the speed of light, almost seeming hit-and-miss played. But on the other hand, I can't hear bass guitar clearly, it's really hard to find in this record; although it is still somewhere under guitars and drums, keeping the harmonic and rhythmical basis.

The cover artwork shows an image of Christ inside a spiral, floating over a crowd; not specially interesting or appealing... The duration of this album is exceptionally long for a death metal band. Clocking up 48' is almost 50% longer than the average death metal release, which usually last about 30 or 35 minutes. Given the songs are quite long too, it could get boring or monotonous but keeps listenable all the way to the end.

So, here's the promising debut of a band that wouldn't keep up with their following releases, and a great album back in those days.