Altar is a bona fide collaboration between powersonic drone throners Sunn 0))) and Japan's experimental rockist thunderhead Boris. Outfitted by the Southern Lord label (Sunn 0)))'s vanity plate) in an oversize digipack with a four-color, 12-page booklet, with black ink on gold metallic pages, it's a handsome package to say the least. When looking through the credits one sees not only the bandmembers from Boris -- Takeshi, Wata, and Atsuo -- listed alongside the Sunn 0))) boys Stephen O'Malley and Greg Anderson, but a surprising array of guests as well, including Joe Preston of Thrones, High on Fire, Earth, and Melvins fame; Earth's Steve Moore; Alan Dubin from O'Malley's other gig, Khanate; Rex Ritter of Jessamine; Kim Thayil (formerly of Soundgarden); and -- of all people -- Jesse Sykes and her bandmates Phil Wandscher and Bill Herzog from the Sweet Hereafter. For starters, five of these six cuts are meant to be listened to at spine-dislodging volume on a decent-to-great set of headphones, or at least a set of speakers cranked to Valhalla with your head placed firmly between them. This baby is really, really slow. All of it. Slower than any record by O'Malley and Anderson's main project. Metalheads may be outrageously bummed at how turtle-like the pace of this set is. But the point is HEAVY, not necessarily "metal." It's drenched in weight and needs volume to lift it off the ground -- and so you can hear everything in this dense mix. When joined together in all their downtuned glory, these guitars and synthesizers actually emit new microphonic tones. The low, pulsating frequencies hack out a space in the wall of drone and offer a new set of tonalities. (Glenn Branca and Rhys Chatham did something akin to this with their guitar-and-bass orchestras, but they were going for the high end of the sonic spectrum and used anywhere from 15 to 100 guitars, all tuned differently and strummed in staggered chord progressions, to get those new sounds.)

1		Etna
2		N.L.T.
3		The Sinking Belle (Blue Sheep)
4		Akuma No Kuma
5		Fried Eagle Mind
6		Blood Swamp