Last year’s ‘Ascetic Reflection’ was one of the best forward thinking Death Metal releases that reached my ears in a long time. The compelling intricacies, creative dynamics and overall mind-boggling musical wizardy made the album slip into my Top-15 of 2022. Simply put: the Australian juggernaut on unorthodox Death Metal, Altars, is back. The band has been dropping out of sight somewhat, but returned unexpectedly and, most importantly, more convincingly than ever. Reason enough to talk to guitarist Lewis Fischer about what happened in the nearly decade it took the band to come up with their second album. An interesting conversation about what musicianship means, the Australian metal scene and about the sense/nonsense of the term ‘progressive’…
Hi Lewis, I wish you a warm welcome to The Whispering Darkness. Your second album, ‘Ascetic Reflection’ has been released almost a year ago. How would you reflect on those months after the release of the album? While I haven’t read any other reviews on it, my guess is that it got well received?
Hi, and thanks for having us. The record has been very well received, and has almost sold out now in all formats. We don’t exactly play accessible music, and being from Australia we are a little more isolated from ears and audiences in places like Europe and North America. The response, considering, has been pretty incredible.
We have some international tours on the horizon, and we’re looking forward to being able to share the material from both Ascetic Reflection and Paramnesia live internationally for the first time. The release has also continued to build steam as people have continued to discover it from year-end top album articles and the like. So in a way, it feels like we’re only just getting started.
‘Ascetic Reflection’ was released almost a decade after your debut album, ‘Paramnesia’ from 2013. In the years in between the band split up and got back together. Can you take us through what happened in those years? What was the main reason that the band broke up and saw its second coming a few years later?
In 2016, after various shows and tours in Australia, it became apparent Altars couldn’t continue in that format due to former members’ ill health. It felt like an impossible task to continue without them, so I made the difficult decision to put the project to rest.
I really felt there was no obvious replacement or alternative at the time, and I lacked the support I needed to be able to keep it going on my own. I didn’t pick up a guitar for a few years after that, I went and did other things.
Ignivomous reached out about joining the band and working on an album together. I was a fan of the band’s work and playing those songs seemed fun, so I picked up the guitar again. I started thinking about what another Altars record would look like during that time, and doing Ignivomous helped reignite that spark for me.
After Ignivomous came back from tour, I felt ready to start work on the next Altars record and began working on the ideas I’d had accumulating in my mind for a while. I felt an innate need to work on the music, to right previous wrongs in a way, and to make up for the lost years by surpassing everything the band had previously done.
So, through a large part of pandemic and consecutive lockdowns here in Australia and Melbourne, I wrote and demoed various versions of the songs that would become Ascetic Reflection.
Later on, restrictions would ease and I would get the opportunity to bring Alan back on board and would recruit Brendan. We then had time to collaborate and complete the record together, with everyone adding their own touch to their respective instruments.
A hiatus of 9 years between albums is quite exceptional these days, but judging from the musical output, the result on ‘Ascetic Reflection’, at least something good came from it. What would you regard as the main differences between ‘Paramnesia’ and your latest album?
The greatest compositional achievement of Paramnesia is, to me, the final title track suite. It still captures everything I was trying to do with that record, and with the band more broadly. I wanted to recapture and build upon that magic.
Ascetic Reflection begins where Paramnesia ends, with the final notes of Paramnesia III: Ouroboros played back in reverse at half-speed through an echo chamber. The record is a kind of dreamscape, and response to what came before it.
Where Paramnesia is a wall of sound, Ascetic Reflection is supposed to expand the stereo field. It’s more tightly composed, and cuts unnecessary flab. I think it’s overall a more cohesive record, and refined.
I was also conscious of the fact that I had always intended these two albums, alongside a third, to form a kind of trilogy. So there’s some continuity between them, as there will be with the next. What comes after that, I guess we’ll see.
Apart from the five years of abscence at the end of the 10’s, Altars is not quite the most prolific band. Is it that you just need and take the time to fully refine and perfect your creations? Or is it just something as banal as lack of time or something else mundane?
It’s worth noting that Ascetic Reflection was actually written extremely quickly. It wasn’t that it took nine years to write, rather that there was an actual, genuine hiatus there in the middle.
Everything with Altars is very deeply considered. And I need to experience and feel things to enable those visions to inform the art. Without this, the art feels a bit empty and meaningless.
I think if you listen to Paramnesia or Ascetic Reflection, it becomes quite obvious you are listening to a larger piece of work that’s much wider in scope and concept.
Of course, we all have to work and have lives too. The band is also very busy at the moment. It’s a good problem to have, but the administrative type tasks that need to be completed do take time away from me being able to write music.
I am working on the next Altars record. Ideally that will come out in the next couple of years and it certainly won’t be a nine year wait. But, I do need to be able to absorb the kind of energies I’ve spoken of to be able to make and inform the kinds of records I actually want to bring into this world.
While listening to ‘Ascetic Reflection’ I can’t shake off the feeling of a larger, broader concept that is embedded in the whole of the album. That feeling is also greatly enhanced by the amazing artwork. Can you take us along through the story of the album? And what do the words “Ascetic Reflection” really mean to you?
There absolutely is, and that’s sort of the point. This isn’t just death metal, it’s something much larger and broader than that which I hope embodies a sense of timelessness. I want my creative output to mean something, to be lasting, and to add something of value to the world and to the culture.
Ascetic Reflection carries multiple meanings. It’s a deeply personal record for me, and incidentally you could say is a reflection of my own asceticism throughout its making due to the ongoing global situation at that time: I was effectively locked in a room and kept in complete solitude for more or less its entire making.
It also relates to my thoughts and feelings towards events that were occurring in parallel to this, such as the bushfires that devastated much of Australia in late 2019 and 2020. But this is just one of the many layers that make the record what it is.
There is no central character to the ‘story’ of Ascetic Reflection, that’s because this is supposed to be the listener themselves. The story is allegorical, so it invites listeners to reflect and apply the record to their own misgivings about the world and discover their own meaning.
About that artwork by Adam Burke, how did that come about? Did you give some hints and ideas to the artist or did he just come up with something that he thought fits to the musical and lyrical concepts of the band?
I provided Adam with a brief explaining the concepts and ideas behind the record. He came back with some rough initial sketches, palette suggestions, and things of this nature. He really understood the record and concepts immediately. What you see is his first and only interpretation of it. It captures the record perfectly, and he really exceeded our expectations with this.
While the Death Metal genre as a whole, almost from the very start, had its technical/complex/progressive niche in which a few bands dwelled, yet without major success, it seems that there is a new generation of bands that are pushing the boundaries of the genre more and more. Do you feel like you are a part of that group of visionary artists?
I think a lot of people would tend to agree with that statement and it’s certainly been my experience in seeing people’s response to the record and band more broadly. There’ll always be people who don’t get our music. Whether we’re held in that regard is not up to me, but it’s part of what I’m trying to do.
We had an interesting discussion amongst ourselves recently, as the words technical and progressive have been thrown around a lot in regards to Altars recently. Ascetic Reflection brought in a lot of new interest from that side of the metal spectrum, but I don’t really think of our music as technical or progressive.
When someone talks about ‘technical death metal’, I immediately think of Cynic or Atheist, or more modern bands like Artificial Brain. I don’t think we have much in common with these sorts of bands to warrant falling into that sort of sub-categorisation. So, for that reason, I don’t think these terms are particularly useful in describing what we actually do.
On the same hand, our music is and can be these things. Our approach is just different. We do these things very organically, rather than with the intent to be progressive or technical. We play death metal, but it is experimental and exploratory in nature.
I recently saw someone describe American guitarist Bill Orcutt’s work as avant-shred. I thought that was interesting, because his works are all wildly experimental and you could call him a virtuoso for his uncanny style and technique. But, would you lump Orcutt in with Yngwie Malmsteem? No, because that would feel absurd. I feel the same way about lumping Altars in alongside a band like Necrophagist, because it provides no valuable descriptive context to do so.
From the very beginning, I’ve been interested in expanding and building on the idea of what death metal is: deconstructing it and putting it back together again. Sometimes this pulls our music into a more old school direction, and at other times it will come at you with a left hook. The end result is something pretty twisted, and hopefully people discover something they haven’t necessarily heard before in the context of a death metal record.
If you reflect on bands like Morbid Angel and Gorguts, this is what they were doing too. They were inventing new languages through which to create and express their ideas. This is the sort of ethos that is inspiring and interesting to me, and I try to apply it to my own work with Altars.
If anything, our approach is the complete rejection of the ‘technical’ or ‘progressive’ in favour of something more radical. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Regardless, I think you have to always try to make something new, if only for yourself, otherwise why play music at all?
Australia always seem to have had a bit of a musical scene that housed some interesting and forward thinking bands, quirky maybe even. From a band like Alchemist to the more recent StarGazer, Portal or Cauldron Black Ram. Maybe I am seeing something that isn’t there, but, can you relate to so the Australian extreme metal scene being a special one?
The Australian scene is relatively small, and a number of the bands you’ve mentioned share or have shared members and histories at various points. At one point, the members of StarGazer, who also perform in Cauldron Black Ram, played with Portal on their album Outre.
If you delve further back, this all really grew out of Martire who were playing a chaotic brand of death thrash as far back as 1986. If you listen to some of those early Martire recordings, you can hear particular rhythmic motifs that very loosely appear on or at least would have influenced Denny Blake and Damon Good’s later recordings with StarGazer, Cauldron Black Ram and to a lesser degree Mournful Congregation.
If someone were to ever write a book about the Australian death metal scene, there is a significant section due just on this. And I think what you are probably hearing is the work and influence of a small group of people who came out of the same scene and city.
There were other members of Martire, like Don Taylor, who went on to form bands like Oni and then Tzun Tzu, and a whole host of other names that should be mentioned in relation to this. And of course there are many other groups of people across the country doing similarly great things too.
The scene right now has a lot of new blood coming through and is becoming a lot more diverse than it has been in the past, and that’s pretty exciting.
Let’s stay in Australia for now. If there’s anything worthy of that qualification, do you feel part of the Australian metal scene? Are there any bands that fervently deserve your encouragement and recommendation?
I’m very much part of the Australian scene and if not performing, I regularly go to shows to see local bands. There are some fantastic groups doing great work at the moment, and the scene is perhaps more diverse and interesting than ever.
Out of Melbourne there’s Faceless Burial, who’ve recently come out with another brilliant album. Contaminated are about to release a new album too, and having heard some of the tracks live comes highly anticipated.
Endless Loss are a relatively new band from Adelaide who’ve just released a very cool EP, and I’m looking forward to their debut full length. Those guys, along with Charnel Altar who released a great album via Blood Harvest a short while ago, are really doing a lot to keep the grass-roots scene of filthy music alive over there.
Out of Brisbane there is a renewed wave of music coming from bands like Resin Tomb, Descent and others who share members. Malignant Aura also recently released an excellent death doom record. Impetuous Ritual have also just released a new album. In Sydney, bands like Golgothan Remains continue to put out excellent releases and Canberra’s Ploughshare is superb.
This is a very small sample of some of the quality out there at the moment. If someone wants to get stuck in the weeds exploring the current crop of Australia-based music, I highly recommend looking at labels like Brilliant Emperor Records, Bitter Loss Records, Gutter Prince Cabal and others. They’re part of a new wave of Australian-based labels who are putting out a number of very high-quality releases from Australian bands.
At the beginning of this year drummer of the first hour, Alan Cadman left the band. How do you foresee the future of the band now that you’re left with just the two of you?
With all change there is challenge, but also progress and opportunity. Dan Nahum, who is a very experienced drummer, brings a new creative element to the band. I’m looking forward to collaborating on new material with Dan and to see where that takes us.
Currently we are hard at work preparing for our upcoming European tour with Fossilization from Brazil and performance at Killtown Deathfest in September, so this is our primary focus for now and we’re looking forward to presenting material from both Paramnesia and Ascetic Reflection live to audiences in Europe for the first time.
New material is in the works, but will likely take a back seat for now as we have a very busy back-half of the year we’re working toward.
The two of you are active in two other bands, Lewis in Ignivomous and Brendan in Convulsing. Can you share any news on those two bands? Admitted, I haven’t heard Convulsing before, but I particularly liked Ignivomous’ ‘Death Transmutation’ and ‘Hieroglossia’ albums.
Brendan is supremely talented and Convulsing comes highly recommended from me. Both Errata and Grievous are excellent records that are worth your time exploring.
Ignivomous isn’t particularly active at the moment. I’d love to do another record, but I’m too busy with Altars right now to be working on that material in parallel. Its members are also currently active or involved with a number of other bands who have either just released or are about to release new records.
Sean Hinds is in Whitehorse, who are about to tour Japan. He also has his solo industrial doom project, Chief Whip, and a new Voidchrist record on the boil which absolutely rips. Chris Jordon is also involved with Voidchrist, and has been pretty busy with Inverloch who are back playing shows again. He’s also been playing with a relatively new Melbourne band called Ghostsmoker, who play an interesting blackened and discordant sort of doom. Chris Volcano is currently handling vocal duties for Cemetery Urn, who have a record due later this year.
As we’re all very busy with other projects, I am unsure what the future holds. It would definitely be great to play those songs again at some point, and to maybe write some new ones.
On a personal level, what do you consider the driving force in your musical life? And as a continuation on that matter, what have been really life-changing records for you?
I take inspiration from many places and things, both from within and from outside the world of death metal and even music more broadly.
If we’re to talk about specific death metal records, it probably started with Domination by Morbid Angel — this was the first Morbid Angel record I heard — and Obscura by Gorguts. Both Trey and Luc have probably been my biggest inspirations as an artist, and I’ve always felt if I combined them I would find myself somewhere in the middle.
Toby Driver from the band Kayo Dot, and prior to that Maudlin of the Well, has also been a long-time inspiration. Kayo Dot’s Dowsing Anemone with Copper Tongue is very special to me, as well as Driver’s In the L… L… Library Loft which both came to me at a pretty pivotal time in my artistic development.
I should also mention jazz-trio The Necks, Sunn O))) and the album Black One and A Sun That Never Sets by Neurosis. There are things I feel in all of these records or artists generally that carry a kind of aura that I connect with and experience in the sorts of death metal records I enjoy. These albums and artists are of course not death metal at all, but they each produce that indescribable feeling for me which I hope to channel in my own works.
I have sometimes described the experience of an Altars concert as a little less like a Morbid Angel show and a bit more like seeing Sunn O))) perform. There are riffs and songs, sure, but it’s also about the physical state these sounds create within the room. I can become lost in a kind of transcendental state when playing, and our audiences tend to become a bit transfixed when we play too, so I suppose the art is achieving its intended purpose.
Also in the same line and certainly something I’m always extremely curious about: have you recently come across any good records that have really grabbed you? Something to recommend?
Absolutely, one recent thing I’m enjoying is the track Solar Witch from the new Thantifaxath record. At time of writing, just the single is out. I can’t wait to hear the whole thing. It’s really rare that I listen to something and get goosebumps like that.
The new Bell Witch, Future’s Shadow Part 1: The Clandestine Gate, is quite special and I’ve enjoyed giving this a few early spins.
Not a recent release, but Blood Incantation’s Live Vitrification is on heavy rotation in my car at the moment. This one really made me remember how much I enjoy live records.
Alright Lewis, I like to thank you for your time and effort, and of course for the great work that is ‘Ascetic Reflection’. Feel free to take these last words…
Thanks so much for having us, and for taking the time to interview us.
