“…‘bleak’ is an understatement. Yet it’s hard to listen to the album and not imagine dreams of the spectacular…” – No Clean Singing
No Clean Singing presents an exclusive stream of The Colossus And The Widow, the second LP from ALTARS OF THE MOON – the post-black metal/shoegaze collective formed by members of Chrome Waves, Uada, Lotus Thrones, The Black Dahlia Murder, and more – ahead of its release this Friday through Disorder Recordings.
Amid the lockdowns in 2021, Nathan Verschoor (Uada) came together with Jeff Wilson (Chrome Waves, Deeper Graves, ex-Nachmystium) and Heath Rave (Lotus Thrones, ex-Wolvhammer) to collaborate on a project that would eventually use the nomenclature of ALTARS OF THE MOON. This union coalesced in Brahmastra, a two-track, twenty-eight-minute exploration into a more psychedelic and darker corner of doom metal than the trio’s main projects were known for. Released through Disorder Recordings, Brahmastra took the tone of Tiamat’s Wildhoney through a cloudy afternoon of hemlock tea and the mushrooms we’re told to stay away from as children. It was a truly miserable affair.
Now, two years later, the collective reconvenes, this time joined by Alan Cassidy (The Black Dahlia Murder) on drums to create the second chapter of ALTARS OF THE MOON, with the newly completed The Colossus And The Widow. An unclassifiable morass of doom and gloom, this thirty-five-minute excursion shows the group continuing to evolve their sonic monolith as time edges on.
With nine new songs, the record was engineered by Nate Verschoor at Hrimhjarta Studio and Jeff Wilson at Disorder Recordings, with Verschoor handling the design and layout, and Wilson handling the final mix and mastering. Additionally, the record features visitations of saxophone from Bruce Lamont (Yakuza) and trumpet from Mac Gollehon (Duran Duran, David Bowie) to dive deeper into misery with The Colossus And The Widow.
With the album stream, Heath Rave reveals, “It’s been a long moment since I’ve listened to this front to back and I decided to sit back and listen without judgement of performance bias and my own ego. Of the many works of art that I’ve been involved in solely or collaboratively, I’m truly grateful for this one coming back to it with fresh ears upon its release. Getting to work with some of the greatest talents in the world of heavy music is such a privilege, and it really felt collaborative considering the limitations of never being in a room together. There’s a darkness expressed here that I’ve always wanted to capture in a project. It gives me the same feel as Tiamat’s A Deeper Kind Of Slumber, My Dying Bride’s 34.788%…Complete, or even Samael’s Passage. While I could hear the potential on the first one we did, Brahmastra, I feel like we tapped the cosmic code of avant garde DNA and I was really able to express and push the vocal and lyrical themes of sorrow and man’s ignorance of its microscopic and fragile place in the universe.”
With their incredibly detailed and glowing critique of the album, No Clean Singing writes in part, “The song titles point toward daunting entities and harrowing events in unknown reaches of the cosmos with no regard for the existence or survival of our dwarfish and damaged species. The idea that it would be no great loss if something extinguished all of us, and that nothing else would care, fuels the themes. When it comes to those themes, especially as publicly described by Heath Rave, ‘bleak’ is an understatement. Yet it’s hard to listen to the album and not imagine dreams of the spectacular, light years removed from the ugliness we wake up to each day. Those sensations can be alien and hostile, but they’re not bleak. Maybe they’re intended as a sign of what we don’t have, and never will have, or a reminder that our egoism is pathetic in the grand scheme of things, but they’re still a counterweight to the gloom that travels with the wonder in the album, side by side.”
Listen to ALTARS OF THE MOON’s entire The Colossus And The Widow early only at No Clean Singing RIGHT HERE.
The Colossus And The Widow will be released digitally and on LP via Disorder Recordings this Friday, November 17th. Find preorders HERE and watch the video for “G.O.D. Initiative” HERE.
Additional videos of the record will post over the weeks ahead.
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