Album Review: Lord Dying – Poisoned Altars

The trio known as Lord Dying has a lot of things in common with their road brothers of most of the last two years, Red Fang and Black Tusk. Lots of loud, completely fucking metal things. Impossibly riffy and heavier than Thor’s sledgehammer when it cracks open your skull, Lord Dying’s sophomore effort via Relapse, Poisoned Altars, comes into the world the same way it leaves it; kicking and screaming bloody murder.

Hailing from the town that does not give a single fuck about what you think, Portland, Oregon, Poisoned Altars is full of eight face-melting tracks that include the six-plus minute juggernaut “An Open Sore’” that features Red Fang vocalist Aaron Beam. If you’re at all planning on coming back as a bullet getting shot out of a gun in the next world, you now have the perfect soundtrack for that trip. Speaking of aural juggernauts, the final track on Poisoned Altars, “Darkness Remains”, will assault you with nearly seven minutes of some of the best metal vocals I’ve heard in a while, as well as vintage sounding guitar solos that bring me back to the days when the only record I ever listened to was Megadeth’s Peace Sells But Who’s Buying. And that’s my happy place, Jack.

Lyrically speaking the record (which was partially conceived while Lord Dying was touring,) is full of some pretty choice nihilistic stuff that could only come from a seasoned, sludge-loving band that strives to keeping it as fucking real as possible. Like this heavy metal zinger from “Offering Pain”: “And I’ll take – my last breath – and I’ll stop – when I’m dead.” A phrase that is destined to become the motto of any headbanger worth their tattoos, or whiplash neck brace. It’s also something I’d expect from a band that has been living life in a rather dismal part of the world (not unlike Seattle), and has constantly been on the road or in a windowless studio for the last five years. So here comes the question that is most often asked of bands that emanate from the PNW; does the dirge of the Pacific Northwest’s seasonal weather at all influence the way Lord Dying sounds when it’s all said and done?

Of course the answer is yes according to an early 2014 interview with LD’s vocalist and guitarist Erik Olson, a ten-year resident of Portland:

They (Portaland musicians) don’t have a lot to do. So they go inside and write music. It’s depressing all the time outside, so you get depressing music out of it!

Although Olson is quick to point out that the weather and lack of refusal by the sun get out of bed for weeks on end doesn’t seem to affect him personally, it absolutely has an affect on Lord Dying’s music. But not in the way that would send you running to the woods with a noose in your hands and a note blaming it all on Judas Priest. It’s really more of a reflection of what being in that kind of environment sounds like. Especially if you lean towards the darker side of life, but revel in it’s grittiness, kick your case of the SADS in the balls, and live to convey that feeling using as many guitars as possible. That’s what Lord Dying sounds like. In other words, mostly words I stole from the 1979 film The Warriors, you can and will dig it.