Artist: Blood Altar
Country: Germany
Label: Self-Released
Formats: CD
Year: 2025
Blood Altar is a new band that, at least for the most part, hails from Germany – but at least has some international component in their line-up. The exact line-up, at this point in time, is unknown, but at least it should have musicians that have past and present experience in such bands as Thorybos, Blood Vengeance (not to be confused with Bloody Vengeance) and Shores Of Ladon. But judging from the band name, this album’s title and especially the band photos it is clear that Blood Altar follows the same sort primitive pummelling road of Blood Vengeance and Thorybos.
That does not mean that it is an exact mirror copy of those bands, but at least there’s lots of proto-corpse paint, bullet belts, gasmasks and spikes involved. They make no secret of the fact that their inspiration comes from Blasphemy, Impiety, Abhorrer, Antichrist, Archgoat, Black Witchery and the like. And, frankly, it is pretty much EXACTLY what ‘Inverted Recrucifixion Of Pious Martyrs’ sounds like.
After a short intro the (old) Impiety/Abhorrer chaos takes over and basically fills the remaining 30 minutes of the album. But when the music slows down a bit the grinding parts that indeed reminds most of older Archgoat shines through, giving the album a little bit of versatility. But, just a little bit, people who came here because of the visuals will not be disappointed by the audio. Nothing that Blood Altar brings to the table has in the slightest ambition of being refined or ground breaking. It is abundantly clear that Blood Altar is here only for the killer tunes and not for reinventing whatever wheels or even taking over the torch. ‘Inverted Recrucifixion Of Pious Martyrs’ is a very solid first effort, perhaps a little uneventful, but then again, it is clear what these guys came for and they did just being bother about anything else.
