{"id":104440,"date":"2025-01-13T00:00:59","date_gmt":"2025-01-13T00:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/?p=104440"},"modified":"2025-01-29T12:58:57","modified_gmt":"2025-01-29T12:58:57","slug":"album-review-grave-altar-shrines-of-hatred","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/album-review-grave-altar-shrines-of-hatred\/","title":{"rendered":"GRAVE ALTAR – Shrines Of Hatred (2025) | Album \/ EP Reviews @ Metal Forces Magazine"},"content":{"rendered":"

GRAVE ALTAR
Shrines Of Hatred<\/strong><\/span>
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\nVicious Witch (2025)<\/span>
Rating: 8\/10<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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The return of these English maniacs may only last just over 27 minutes but there\u2019s enough devastation and darkness here to last a lifetime. Shrines Of Hatred<\/em> is the sophomore full-length slab from Grave Altar that continues to mash the brain with their hostile brand of thrashing blackened metal.<\/p>\n

Dripping with spite and venom the album kicks off with the less than subtle onslaught of \u2018Abysmal Tomb\u2019 which zips by like some rabid whippet shitting acid. In fact, all the songs seem to whizz by in a flash, but make sure you pay several visits to this outing to fully appreciate its feverish nature. Blazing riffs thrash with both guttural and scathing vocals. The gentleman responsible for such cacophony is Krow who heads this trio like a maniacal ringleader spitting blasphemy and wielding a rusty chain for extra clanking appeal. The drums of Fiend and the bass of Maniac snap and whip like the black, smouldering leather wings of some archaic demon taking to the night.<\/p>\n

Grave Altar embarks on a satanic strategy that sees them channel the furious entities of Venom, old Sodom, and the well soiled South American underground. Raw, billowing and hissing, the likes of \u2018Death\u2019, \u2018Angel Crypt\u2019 and \u2018Rites Of Mayhem\u2019 tie the membranes into tight knots of barbed, entangled chaos, rarely stepping out from their own personal wiry mesh of a space.<\/p>\n

Comfortable within its own skin, Shrines Of Hatred<\/em> seeks no urge to expand or even elaborate on its caustic creations as \u2018Black Wings Of Wrath\u2019 and the wild and reckless rants of \u2018Hell\u2019s Necromancer\u2019 act as bile-soaked reflux erupting from acidic bowels and forming as an end product of burning phlegm coated in grit and soot.<\/p>\n

Grave Altar plays up to its track titles like devilish disciples knelt as some vast yet rickety dark arts shrine. \u2018Baptised In Hellfire\u2019 features a simple yet chanted chorus to a backdrop of wicked thrashing and it\u2019s a seething, furious tirade which epitomizes the evil tumult this band is capable of. It\u2019s just a shame that the album feels like it\u2019s too short and that another two or three additional tracks would have been welcomed with open arms. Even so, Shrines Of Hatred<\/em> is a devilish tornado of an opus, one which swirls like a dervish before disappearing up its own leathery arse.<\/p>\n

If you like your metal vicious yet brief then I can think of no better altar to worship at.<\/p>\n

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

GRAVE ALTARShrines Of Hatred Vicious Witch (2025)Rating: 8\/10 The return of these English maniacs may only last just over 27 minutes but there\u2019s enough devastation and darkness here to last a lifetime. Shrines Of Hatred is the sophomore full-length slab from Grave Altar that continues to mash the brain with their hostile brand of thrashing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,5858],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-104440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-album-ep-reviews","category-grave-altar"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104440","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=104440"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104440\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":104445,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104440\/revisions\/104445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}