Alterbeast – Immortal Review

Originally written by Matt Longo

The thing about being immortal is that you can never, well… RISE FROM YOUR GRAVE.

With that lycanthrope-in-the-room Altered Beast reference out of the way, before moving to the music, let’s ponder for a bit longer on just what in the hell is an ‘alterbeast’. If we’re talking about the video game, then the title is clear (since the centurion character literally transforms into beasts); the band’s spelling looks more like a Project Runway contestant’s sassy nickname, or perhaps the AIM handle of a circa-2002 Suicide Girl. And yet, in the band logo I see a werewolf—so maybe there was a halfway-circumvented copyright issue with Sega that resulted in name modification. Kinda like the whole Rhapsody mishegas, or the ‘b.c.’ appendix attached to Bison and Ghost.

The music on Immortal is firmly 21st century, and sounds like none of the aforementioned groups. The supplied band photo proudly displays five black torsos with Gorod, Abigail Williams, The Black Dahlia Murder, Spawn of Possession, and most interestingly, King Diamond. Did “one of these things is not like the other” just cross your mind, too? Not saying it wouldn’t be appreciated — we certainly hail to the King ‘round these parts. Alterbeast, on the other paw, prowls around tech death territory, and trad metal nods only surface with solos (if anywhere).

Immortal sports a production crew that should please the kids, with said solos ably recorded by TBDM’s former four-stringer, Ryan “Bart” Williams, and the vocals arranged by Bob Swanson (best known for the last two Rings of Saturn albums) at the somewhat silly sounding Mayhemness Studios. Those two are both relatively green behind the board, but the mixing/mastering was helmed by Zack Ohren, whose hands have been on scores of releases from the last decade.

Alterbeast’s debut blasts a classic 8 tracks across an economic half-hour runtime with a get-in/get-out mentality that never overstays its welcome, so the delicious divebombs that punctuate “Into Oblivion” and deadly swipes in “Vile Remnants” successfully strike with their intended impact. Flurrying fingers are front-and-center on “Ancient’s Retribution”, but serve more to dizzy up the girls and boys than flat out jam; it’s still the most solid track here. They otherwise tend to do best on the ‘Side A’ and ‘Side B’ “openers” (said the man using analog media references for a digitally distributed promo), which benefit from a little added atmosphere.

Overall, however, the album strikes me as insular rather than inspired. Although nearly every track has cool elements, few riffs are hummably embedded in my brain, and a nagging sense of weird familiarity abounds… like how the Immortal cover art sorta looks like the bastard child of the last two Suffocation LPs. Plus, their bio excessively lists bunch of ‘adjective-noun’ couplings that simply feel like thesaurus-guided embellishment: “brutal musicianship” and “unmerciful grooves” and “grievous piano”.

I hear the dude can really shred …or tickle the ol’ 88 …or whatever.

It’s an attempt at description without meaningful descriptors. Alterbeast is touted as “instrumentally adept and plainly scathing” — which I find inadvertently apt for other reasons. Like, I’m not accusing these cats of lacking chops — Gabe Seeber is a tireless drummer who also spreads his talents to The Kennedy Veil and sometimes Decrepit Birth live; Michael Zamora strives for bass presence and explodes in small solos (see “Serpentspire”); guitarists Rusty Cornell & Andrew Lamb can equally fucking flay with turn-on-a-dime riffage and sweeping bursts of notes …but plainly scathing? It’s like effortlessly leveling an entire landscape—as if casually pushing the button on a doomsday device, or arriving at a destination sans journey. In short: if you’re gonna scathe, scathe with style.

Welcome to your doom, motherfuckers—it’s a long way to Dis; be sure to down every power-up.