Youth Against Christ

I often think to myself how someone like me, a devout believer in God and the light of Jesus Christ, and someone who's grown up with a mother instilling good, Christian values in me, could listen to such… hateful music. Of course, I deal with issues like everyone else in this world, no belief in any religion will save you from the shit life throws at you. Still… it's quite funny that I listen to music like death metal and black metal that have built their foundations off of anti-religious (specifically anti-Christian) values. The answer that I've come up with is that, I just find it amusing. Corny, but amusing. Metal is essentially, in my eyes, a bunch of music nerds attempting to scare the masses with "muh satanik" messages, but very few of them actually worship the Devil or have any truly negative feelings towards religious people. This is essentially how I feel about Altar, a Dutch death metal band, whose lyrics and theme are about as corny and laughable as the majority of the bands from around this time. But, I'm not listening to this genre of music to mock the overly edgy lyrics that most bands find themselves writing, rather, I'm in it for one thing; riffs.

While "Youth Against Christ," Altar's 1994 debut album, is about as original as combining macaroni with cheese, they have constructed some pretty good songs that are built off of heavy, simple, but heavy riffs that drive the songs forward. Sure, none of these riffs are anything you haven't heard before, but, even still, I find myself really getting into this album and headbanging everytime I listen to it. It's certainly not reinventing the wheel in any way, however, I do enjoy this album from time to time. The production is heavy, a little bit more compressed than I would like, but full enough to let everything shine and give the album that aggressive edge it needs. The vocals are convincingly spiteful, brimming with rage, just as you would hope from a genre like old school death metal. The individual performances on the strings and the kit aren't particularly technical or flashy, but they definitely can handle their instruments and don't feel sloppy or incapable.

Most of the riffs consist of death metal based grooves, akin to, but not nearly as good as, the original wave of American death metal. Think Deicide, Morbid Angel, Malevolent Creation, Cannibal Corpse and the likes. Of course, everyone and their mother in the underground death metal scene wanted to be those bands, so it's not a surprise that they were just following suit and not trying to be too experimental with their sound. If you want a brief description of what it sounds like… a Satanic death metal album released in 1994. Great, right?

If you're a sucker for anything tagged death metal on MA and need another fixing of some hard hitting death metal, Altar might have you covered. At 48 minutes in length, it's a little long for its overall lack of dynamism and ideas, but hey… the music could be a lot worse than what's on display here. Fans of American death metal will find something to like here, even if the riffs aren't the most original - it'll still get you to headbang multiple times throughout the duration of the album. God bless!

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.