Altarage returns from the murk of this Earth with their seventh album Cogwheel, which just so happens to be their most holistic and destructive effort so far, and any listener knows that’s quite the remark to make knowing their past doings.
Release date: July 31, 2026 | Sentient Ruin | Instagram | Bandcamp
Time is the inevitable grand jury of all things that come to pass, applying in all fields of life. When sticking to the musical meaning, the passing of time gets easily diminished or exaggerated, emphasizing how it isn’t exactly linear, and changes accordingly to one’s perspective and expectations. If a band who has put out material nearly annually takes suddenly longer to do that, it easily feels like they’ve fallen off of the face of the Earth, while others consistently release something every six or seven years and no one questions anything. One aspect that without a doubt plays a part in this is how the current global tide seems to sweep over everything and everyone in an accelerating sequence, as everything from industrialization to social media and faux intelligences and whatever the fuck else advances in an insane pace, expecting people to follow and be on top of things. Only rushing, no dragging, and there’s certainly no value in the moment, if any corporations are developers are to be believed. The machinery thrives in endless hunger and must move constantly, you and I being the half-alive matter that it feeds off of.
I first came across Altarage seven or eight years ago on a sunny day while taking the bus to go to a festival, and I instantly knew it was one of those pivotal moments in life where a lot of things will change going forward. I’ve been a very, very avid listener since, having covered them numerous times at this site and elsewhere. The band kept on honing their craft and releasing all the more pummeling new tunes consistently and quite frequently, up until 2023’s Worst Case Scenario, which was followed by the longest release gap in the band’s career. Granted it was only three years, but with the opening paragraph in mind and the fact that literally everything in my life has turned inside out and sideways during that time period, it sure feels like an eternity. But now the wait is over, and Cogwheel is here.
Having been released on July 31 via Sentient Ruin after a very brief promo run, I decided to take my time with the record in truly immersing it, and it also took quite a bit longer than I anticipated, hence the later date of this review itself.
Altarage has always been about serving their own artistry to the utmost degree, moving towards a clear heading on each of their albums. While NIHL and Endinghent were like cacophonic calls from the very vortex of the soul itself, The Approaching Roar saw them incorporating more left field elements into their output, being sort of the culmination point of the band’s first few years. Then we got Succumb, which took the finest aspects of its predecessors and started to mold a revised sound for the band, relying more on experimentation and leaving no stone unturned approach. The following, at first physical-only, three-song monolith Sol Corrupto took a further leap in that direction in its organic dread, while the already mentioned Worst Case Scenario then pulled to an entirely other direction with a much more clear production and almost prog-like tendencies. Throughout the years Altarage has always delivered goods of the highest order, and so I found myself wondering where they could possibly go from there.
So the time eventually came, and the absolutely monstrous 15-minute single “Ichor” was released a few weeks after Cogwheel was announced, and I’m not sure when was the last time that I would’ve been able to summon such a massive vocabulary of expletives when talking about it. It was clear that Altarage hasn’t spent the past years idling, but chipping away on a new form and approach that now sees the band in their most visceral and massive stature to date.
Consisting of seven songs and 74-minute runtime, Cogwheel sounds like a leviathan monstrosity somehow captured in an aural form, and even though Altarage has always sounded only like themselves, this time around it feels like they have discovered themselves anew from the place where they’ve been heading all along, regardless of whether or not that has been clear to anyone involved. We get every single signature flavour in positive excess with a healthy dose of new and novel ones, most notably in the form of the elongated drone portions, the grandiose clean vocals on the mentioned single (though nowhere else on the album, which is both an admirable move yet a bit of a shame), and overall more avant-garde-esque sound. The massive wall of sound is most certainly present and towering over us, yet I’m not sure if the band has ever had as crisp and balanced production. So Cogwheel simply rolls from one victory to another, it seems.
The opening track “Peso Muerto” wastes no time before kicking in, in all of its staccato-like pummeling capable of not only moving mountains, but annihilating them. Familiar atmosphere takes a suffocating hold instantly, and it’s like meeting an old sleep paralysis demon after a while. Bouncing between faster impulses and seething, dragging rhythms, there’s a very particular sense of haunting in the air, further driven home with the fuzzy ending rumbles and the second track “Wielder”, which follows a somewhat similar motif. Starting and ending with an elongated spacious droning, it only takes the two first songs to know we are dealing with a new kind of beast this time around, further emphasized by the fact that we are already almost twenty five minutes into the record after this pair.
“Future Wreck” takes a more brooding pace, underlining the ominous ambiance that seems to dictate every step along the way more than ever before. I’ll say that all things considered, the songs on Cogwheel are quite chameleon by nature – not in the least due to their lengths I’m sure – and what that does is that it sacrifices some individualism, but the entirety is simultaneously insanely fluid and coherent. After several doom sequences, “Future Wreck” ends again in a low-frequency rumble, giving way to “1988”, a fully instrumental (and borderline instrument-less) song that sits perfectly in the middle, dividing Cogwheel into two bigger portions. We have gotten tastes of this kind from Altarage previously, especially on Sol Corrupto, but now the band has fully committed to exploring this side of their mien, and that’s a damn beautiful thing, as much as it is harrowing and acutely haunting.
After this intermezzo, “Not a Proper Burial” swings in with force, ebbing and flowing between tortuous percussive and hammering rhythms, proving to be an elaborate riff-fest that just keeps on going. There’s excellent breathers and roomier parts strewn here and there, making the song stand out in its versatility. Again ending on a moody note, the mentioned single “Ichor” swells in, before giving way to reverberating wooden hits and somewhat harmonious squelching, resolving into the gigantic clean vocal-led barrage that for sure twisted a neck or two around when it was released. Being the longest song on the album, it’s also the most epic one in terms of movements, obviously also due to the over-the-top wailing and howling vocals which I love, and truly wish will be explored more in-depth later on. That said, I also have to admire the size of the guys’ balls for using this one as the single, absolutely mad and unexpected move. Well, come to think of it, that’s probably precisely why they did that. The latter half of “Ichor” is more akin towards the known Altarage vibe, topped off with some more elongated monotone sough before an abrupt end.
The closer “Industrial Offering” starts with some metallic and hollowed-out clean guitar passages before a familiar mass breaks in with a weirdly ascending and descending main riff and echoing individual notes on the front and center. Going on at first seemingly endlessly, or in other words exactly as long as it needs to, the second half of the song shows Altarage in perhaps its most evil form yet, providing a fitting end to the entirety, cutting out to the sounds from the intro but reversed, and thus the snake has bitten its own tail.
On Cogwheel, their seventh record, Altarage are more comfortable in their skin than perhaps ever before. Every time I return to it, I find new things to obsess over, as the amount of hooks and details is just mind-boggling, especially in this context. Being more than a sum of its parts, I applaud the band for fully committing to do what needs to be done in order to achieve what needs to be achieved. That is by no means an easy task, but then again, Altarage ain’t no ordinary band either. As I take Cogwheel for yet another spin, I can’t wait to discover the further horrors it holds, nor those that the band is hopefully preparing to throw our way again sooner rather than later.
