Review 8

Generally I am against any trend (be it genre or band or whatever) and I dislike the term "cult". I understand that people need heroes, but I am not going to join this kind of game and pay tribute to every band that comes from the past. Sometimes this urge to acknowledge unnoticed bands harms the bands, because we deal more with their "cult" aura, than the essence of their music (not to mention the fact that we want to erase the guilt of our ignorance).
This was an introduction stimulated by the case of Pagan Altar, but thankfully the British quartet combines both the aura and the essence. Pagan Altar is a band, which has come on surface after almost twenty years. They have been reactivated and recently, in the year that passed, they released their second LP "The Lords Of Hypocrisy", which is a collection of songs written during the first years of the ‘80s.As the songs were composed in another context they share elements from Sabbatical heavy metal and the dark side of NWOBHM. They have a lot of resembling elements with Black Sabbath (the side that flirted with typical hard rock sound), Black Widow and Pentagram; sometimes they even reminded me Iron Butterfly, but this is a slight idea in my mind. To give you an easy example they could easily be the grandfathers of the Swedish time travellers Witchcraft. Of course they are not a doom metal band; nobody can claim this. But they can be put together with other bands of the dark heavy rock category, mainly due to the attitude, the image and the lyrics. A visit in their website will reveal to you a hidden treasure of documentary photos of the mystical image of the band (photo sessions in graveyards, live photos wearing cloaks etc).
"The Lords Of Hypocrisy" is consisted of nine tracks, with the self-titled to consist the ideal opening track; very descriptive of what you are about to find when you proceed. And what awaits you is mainly mid tempo heavy rock, with catchy, haunting and dark riffs, steady and powerful rhythm section, and a very characteristic voice, which stands somewhere between Ozzy and Ian Anderson. Other songs worth mentioning are the three following ones, "Satan’s Henchmen", "Sentinels Of Hate" and the epic ten-minute "Armageddon". The production is a typical “seventies” one, purposively I assume. The good thing is that it allows the music to transmit the passion of the band and the vibrations of something decent and true. The cover is simply good and as I have already written, it is another contribution to the building of the Pagan Altar’s dark image.
Despite their age, the band seems to engulf modern technology and they use a well designed website for the promotion of their work. They end up to be a very professional band, something that has cancelled any doubts I had about the band’s intentions. We have experienced a lot of bad reunions, so we have to be cautious, don’t you think? However we still need to see today’s dynamic of the band and to witness if they are able to give us something as equally worthy as "The Lords Of Hypocrisy". If "The Time Lord" is graceful to them, then we can expect something really good