Review by Hate Fiend for Altar / Cartilage - Ex Oblivione / The Fragile Concept of Affection (1992)

In the early 90's death metal underground, split releases became more popular for spreading the music of underground bands among smaller independent record labels. One fine example of such a release was the Altar / Cartilage Split Album from the cult Drowned Productions label, which presented one band each from two of Europe's most prolific and distinctive sounding underground death metal scenes, Sweden and Finland. This album is sometimes unofficially referred to as 'Ex Oblivione / The Fragile Concept Of Affection', named after the titles of the two individual recordings of the bands, but officially the album was simply titled Altar / Cartilage - Split Album.

Starting the album is Sweden's Altar, who thrash their way through five songs of very raw yet very musical and well written/played old school death metal showing some musical roots in dark evil thrash, yet sounding cryptic and underground in the early 90's death metal way. The songs here vary in tempos from slow and heavy to fast and aggressive with mid to low range aggressive old school death growls. The production is very underground sounding and more like a demo but works reasonably well for this style of death metal. All songs are strong so picking a stand out song is not easy, but I especially liked the five minute plus closer and title track 'Ex-Oblivione'.

Following Altar is Finland's Cartilage. The good thing about this split album is that despite the two bands being from two different countries / scenes, their music does not differ too much in style (unlike the Masacre / Profanatica split album from Osmose Prods did for example) and therefore the music from the two bands combines very well for a split album of underground death metal of the day. Cartilage also appear with five songs of raw, cryptic yet very well written and musical underground old school death metal. The tempos range from slow, heavy and gloomy to fast aggressive sections with mid to low range evil old school death growls. The Cartilage songs here are a good example of early 90's death metal in its earliest form, yet were less musically rooted in thrash, and show the characteristic obscure and cryptic atmosphere of early Finnish death metal. The production is raw and underground yet strong and brings the band's music across very well. Stand out track here for me is 'Consanguine to Understanding'. Interestingly, the CD version of this album included two bonus tracks from each band, not present on the LP version. One difference with the two bonus tracks from Altar is the lower tuned guitars, yet the musical style overall remains the same, which shows very well how the band's sound evolved. The two bonus tracks from Cartilage include the intro and opening song of their demo, 'The Altar', a personal fave of mine since that demo was my introduction to the band.

This album is a cult release from the deeper underground of the early 90's death metal scene and is difficult to find. Do not despair fellow death fiends, for it has been re-released as a 2xCD set from Xtreem Music with additional bonus / demo tracks from each band. There is also a very good quality bootleg circulating that is an exact copy of the original CD that will be of interest to collectors. Either version is highly recommended for old school death fanatics who like their death metal cryptic, raw, and underground. [Originally written for Devoured Death fanzine #2, published Feb 2022]