Lord Dying - Poisoned Altars

Genre: Sludge Metal
Label: Relapse Records

Ah, Portland. Home to Voodoo Doughnuts, entitled bicyclists, The Roseland and far too many sludge/doom metal bands. Seriously, the city is crawling with them. I always figured that we'd be known as a thrash or speed metal town before anything else. Eh... at least, that was what I was thinking before I played Lord Dying's sophomore album, Poisoned Altars. Well, I still think that there are too many sludgey/doomy type bands in the area. Only now, I just really dig one more of them (the others being Deep Sea Vents, Red Fang, YOB and Agalloch... those all count, right?).

Poisoned Altars forces you to bang your fucking head (thankfully it allows you the option of wall or no wall) with it's HEAVY riff driven songs. So much so that I managed to work up a sweat while doing so. This may be the first album that gave me a fucking workout! That being said, the riffin' is definitely the strongest aspect of Poisoned Altars. Songs like, '(All Hopes Of A New Day)... Extinguished' and 'The Clearing At The End Of The Path' are prime examples of C. Evans lead guitar work and vocalist E. Olsen's rhythm guitar work. His vocals are also nothing to sneeze at. Yeah, they're not anything you probably can't do yourself, but this just fucking sells it! Olsen stays steady with a gruff bellow for most of the album, but occasionally he breaks off into a raspier vocal that isn't quite singing or shouting. (I dunno, you tell me what I'm supposed to call it...)

I'm not trying to sell the rest of Lord Dying short here. Rob Shaffer's drumming is fun and at times can even be a little on the experimental side of wild and crazy. Now, I'm not sure if it was my head phones of if it's the mixing, but I had one hell of a time isolating the bass. However, from what I can tell, it's right were it needs to be. (Kinda the lot of the bassist, eh?) It really sucks that I couldn't make it out since I assume that it's on par with the rest of Lord Dying's sound and is just as deserving of this praise.

I highly recommend Poisoned Altars to anyone who digs their sludge on the lighter side of serious, heavy on the heavy and less than zero fucks given about it. Lord Dying bathes in the puddle of muck that is thier genre and ends up leaving it sludgier than they found it!

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