{"id":101960,"date":"2023-11-10T00:00:57","date_gmt":"2023-11-10T00:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/?p=101960"},"modified":"2023-11-22T14:37:31","modified_gmt":"2023-11-22T14:37:31","slug":"album-review-left-cross-upon-desecrated-altars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/album-review-left-cross-upon-desecrated-altars\/","title":{"rendered":"LEFT CROSS – Upon Desecrated Altars (2023) | Album \/ EP Reviews @ Metal Forces Magazine"},"content":{"rendered":"

LEFT CROSS
Upon Desecrated Altars<\/strong><\/span>
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\nProfound Lore (2023)<\/span>
Rating: 6.5\/10<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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Returning after a six years since their 2017 debut album Chaos Ascension<\/em>, Richmond, Virginia-based noise beasts Left Cross make up for lost time by battering you to death within minutes.<\/p>\n

This is not a pleasant experience due to its unrelenting hammering, which is made all the more overwhelming by a boggy production that doesn\u2019t necessarily aid them in their quest for total annihilation. Upon Desecrated Altars<\/em> runs for 35 minutes yet seems short on ideas and at times comes across as rather repetitive, and I just don\u2019t have the patience.<\/p>\n

After a short instrumental intro (\u2018Debellation\u2019) you get blasted by nine brutal tracks of war-fuelled death metal whereby all instruments and voice merge as one great boiling furnace that combines Immolation and bestial blackened war noise. It\u2019s ugly, brutish, violent and uncompromising from the off with the ultra violent drafts of \u2018The Blood Of Mars\u2019, through the hellish swarm of \u2018Burning Raids\u2019, to the hyper tension of the title track and culminating in the gnashing bleakness of \u2018Celestial Wound\u2019.<\/p>\n

There is little time for deviation, no room to breathe, and by the end you are seeking a touch of Electric Light Orchestra\u2019s \u2018Mr Blue Sky\u2019 to take the edge off. Left Cross sound seriously pissed off; tracks like \u2018Unhallowed Oaths\u2019 and \u2018Inexorable March\u2019 are songs to drive tanks to.<\/p>\n

Left Cross are the guys that will fight among themselves long after the war is over and their brand of tormented angst is not one I\u2019m always comfortable with, but then again if their aim was to force a submission after a few seconds then they have most certainly achieved that. Now, who is gonna clean all that blood up?<\/p>\n

Neil Arnold<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

LEFT CROSSUpon Desecrated Altars Profound Lore (2023)Rating: 6.5\/10 Returning after a six years since their 2017 debut album Chaos Ascension, Richmond, Virginia-based noise beasts Left Cross make up for lost time by battering you to death within minutes. This is not a pleasant experience due to its unrelenting hammering, which is made all the more […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,5526],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-101960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-album-ep-reviews","category-left-cross"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101960"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101960\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":101961,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101960\/revisions\/101961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}