While those tethered to the glossy, tissue-thin sheen of mainstream metal try desperately to disassociate themselves from the atavistic squall of real heaviness, bands like Lord Dying are the modern era’s true outlaws.
Poisoned Altars is an unashamed exercise in heavy fucking metal, albeit of a wilfully raw and hostile kind that shrugs off subtlety and embraces the beast within.
Like High On Fire’s glue-huffing stepbrothers, the Portland quartet have a firm grip on the Sabbathian hatchet, but when they let the blade fall they do so with indiscriminate rage and little interest in melodic sweetness. At their best, they exhibit a Crowbar-like mastery of the gutter-level groove: A Wound Outside Of Time sounds like something Kirk Windstein would write while being threatened with a knife to the jugular. Meanwhile, a natural flair for mixing bulbous, six-string grit with an intangible sense of epic grandeur makes the sprawling likes of An Open Sore and Darkness Remains far more distinctive and deadly than their ingredients might suggest. Most importantly, Lord Dying know that heavy metal is, and always will be, the law.
Via Relapse
