REVIEW: Of Virtue - Death Of The Altar
Some albums spend their opening minutes trying desperately to convince you they're important. Death Of The Altar doesn't bother. OF VIRTUE come out swinging with the sort of confidence that suggests they've already decided what this album is going to be — and they're not particularly interested in asking whether we're ready for it. Following 2023's Omen and its considerable 65-million-plus streams, the easy move would have been to stick a few more massive choruses over the same formula and call it a day. Thankfully, OF VIRTUE clearly weren't interested in doing the easy thing.
Instead, Death Of The Altar sounds like a band looking at everything that got them here, deciding some of it needs to fucking go, and then finding out what happens when they start pulling the whole thing apart. The result is darker, heavier and considerably more uncomfortable than you'd expect — but importantly, it still sounds like OF VIRTUE.
Opening with Death Of The Altar, the band immediately throw industrial electronics, crushing guitars and an enormous chorus into the blender. Tyler Ennis and Damon Tate provide contrasting vocal personalities throughout, moving between vulnerability and outright venom without making either feel like a costume change. It's a strong introduction to an album that refuses to pick between melody and brutality when it can simply have both. Divinity keeps the momentum rolling, building on the album's darker atmosphere before The End brings another hefty dose of metalcore aggression. Yet what makes Death Of The Altar work isn't necessarily the individual moments of heaviness. It's the way OF VIRTUE understand that heaviness hits harder when there's something underneath it. There is plenty of emotional wreckage here.
Enemy State is abrasive and tense, while What’s It Like To Be Happy? takes a more introspective route, its very existence feeling like a sarcastic question posed from somewhere deep inside the pit. Happiness isn't exactly handed out generously across these eleven tracks, but neither is misery treated as an aesthetic accessory. That distinction matters. OF VIRTUE aren't simply writing songs about feeling like shit. They're interested in why we keep returning to the things that make us feel like shit in the first place. Too Late digs further into that emotional exhaustion before Welcome To Hell arrives with suitably sinister energy. It's one of the record's heavier punches, but Death Of The Altar consistently avoids becoming a generic collection of breakdowns stitched together by atmospheric choruses. Instead, there's movement.
The Art Of Love brings another melodic dimension into the mix, while Flatline feels colder and more stripped back emotionally. The guitars still carry serious weight, but there's a sense that the album is becoming increasingly interested in the aftermath rather than the explosion itself. Then comes Devotion. If the album has a central obsession, it's here: the difference between loving something and allowing it to consume you. The title becomes almost sinister when placed alongside everything that has come before it. Devotion sounds beautiful until you realise just how easily it can become another word for surrender. And then Can’t Keep Knockin’ Me Down closes the door. Not with a triumphant declaration that everything is suddenly fine. That would be far too convenient. Instead, it's defiant in a much more believable way — the refusal to keep allowing the same forces to dictate the outcome.
Musically, this is OF VIRTUE sounding more confident in their ability to blur the edges of metalcore, hard rock and alternative music. The electronic textures add atmosphere without swallowing the guitars, while the production gives the bigger moments plenty of room to breathe. There are huge choruses, nasty riffs and enough vocal variation to keep the record from settling into one predictable shape. But the real strength of Death Of The Altar is its refusal to pretend growth is pretty. It isn't.
Sometimes growth is admitting that something you desperately wanted was bad for you. Sometimes it's realising that the person you were trying so hard to become was never actually yours. Sometimes it's finally looking at the altar you've spent years worshipping and deciding that maybe it's time to knock the fucking thing over. Death Of The Altar isn't OF VIRTUE reinventing themselves completely, it's something better. It's OF VIRTUE taking what already worked, dragging it somewhere darker, more uncomfortable and considerably more honest — and discovering that there's still plenty of fire left in the wreckage.
Score: 8/10
Death Of The Altar will be released on Friday 2nd October via Arising Empire.
Words: Mia Gailey
Photos: Alexander Bemis
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