The Abyss Gate Re-opens

The Abyss Gate Re-opens is a quite peculiar title not only for a first release, which would be the case here, but rather in general. It implies that the abyss had been closed and all the evil folk, whose 'final' destination or habitat was supposed to be somewhere in the infernal chambers, had to be relocated to a more lofty area; a place originally, as we all know, limited to the Mormons. Following this line of reasoning, the Italian band Altar of Perversion would not only help all the evil foes to reach their supposed destination, but would further relief heaven of the burden of overpopulation; accordingly can this demo be recommended to all folks of the Mormon belief, as it supports their cause ... at least when it comes to the afterlife.

So, there we are, the Abyss is open again and the fiendish and hellish creatures are provided with new souls once more. Let the torture commence. Back to the topic: an acoustic guitar opens the demo, but soon a peculiar kind of black metal takes over the lead and one has to admit that this band tried something different. There are facets in the concept that make this piece of music interesting and enjoyable. First of all, the guitars tend to play some weird riff-structure, which is no typical endless tremolo-picking, but rather an approach which comes as a motive of several chords played in a very fast fashion; it would sound a little bit dissonant on the first impression. As a counter-motive to the overall black metal an acoustic guitar is used whose part is not limited to the opening of each track, it would also appear in the compositions with a role to add some additional weirdness to them due to a different tempo in which the chords are played.

Overall Altar of Perversion feel more comfortable in the faster regions, but vary the music enough to avoid an overarching plainness to occur; yet, the problems in the concept happen to be rather in the not-so-fast regions, because the band face some difficulties in keeping the atmosphere up; the repetition of ideas, which is one of the core facets of the music cannot be overshadowed left alone compensated once the tempo drops. Generally it is good to see some amount of variation going on, but it is necessary to get it right and Altar of Perversion are not able to do such every time they need to. Their strengths lie all in the parts in which the aforementioned riff-structure comes into play, because it give the compositions an identity, sounds cool and it is something not commonplace. When writing this demo the Italian band did not dare to push their concept to even weirder levels and stayed on the safe shore in some respect. To be fair, this would be their first release and maybe later ones will offer some further exploration of the ideas whose first glimpses can be examined on The Abyss Gate Re-opens. On a small side-note: the vocalist wakes memories on Abbath's performance of the Norwegian band Immortal on their Battles in the North release; in the strange timing of the lyrics.

Even though the genre has not been invented anew on this release, the Italian band does nevertheless a solid performance for a first demo and would it not be for the unnecessary interludes, which are unable to stand up to the quality of the rest of the music, then "The Abyss Gate Re-opens" could be quite interesting. Raw and occasionally violent art is offered here and fans of the underground scene might like this piece.