An awesome, evocative black metal outfit from Lithuania, Altar Shadows (or Altoriu Seseliai, in their own language) debuts here with an incredible first album - this is some of catchiest, most epic sounding Eastern Euro black metal that I've heard so far. I think that this is another one-man outfit, beacuse the booklet has a photo of a single corpsepainted indiviual, but I'm not 100% sure. As you might expect, there's a heavy pagan element to Altar Shadows, but I'm not picking up on any of the questionable racial/nationalistic ideologies that tend to come part-and-parcel with black metal bands from this part of Europe. And it's more than just a black metal album. Recordings of chirping crickets and the sound of leaves rustling in the wind give way to somber, beautiful slow-core dirges that remind me of Drudkh. Harsh growling vocals pan from speaker to speaker over spiky tremelo picking and swirling shoegazy riffs. Lilting acoustic folk strum is plucked out softly over sounds of birdsong and the burbling of a creek running through an ancient Lithuanian forest. Buzzing, Burzumic midtempo black metal is accompanied by acoustic guitars, giving Altar Shadow's ominous buzz a folky feel, and often busting out with awesome psychedelic blues-based soloing over the riffs and churning double bass drumming. The sounds of flutes drift through deep shadowy woods, with thunder rumbling off in the distance, and answered by the crowing of a rooster. "The Yellow Moon III" is a midpaced rocker that combines chugging heavy metal riffing with powerful melodic leads, unleashing frenetic double bass drumming alongside a super catchy riff and killer spacey soloing. The flute shows up again on "I'm Waiting", a beautiful medievel sounding folk tune that evolves into an epic black metal waltz. A deep female voice appears on "In The Falling Snow", which is again played on acoustic guitars but this time it feels like they are playing actual black metal riffs on them.

I love this album. Alot of the leads have a spacey psychedelic feel to them that reminds me of Pink Floyd quite a bit, and fans of Nachtmystium's more recent psych-black metal will probably LOVE Altar Shadows. But it's the Lithuanian folk music that really takes center stage on this album. Most of the songs blend together those acoustic folk music elements with the Burzum-esque black metal, using a combination of original lyrics and classical Lithuanian poetry, and further mix in those evocative ambient field recordings to invoke visions of untouched forests, rain-choked skies looming overhead, and remote Lithuanian farmsteads. Amazing stuff. Comes with an 8-page booklet that includes all of the lyrics, cool grainy artwork that perfectly matches the rainy, gloomy feel of Speckledy Falcons, and some personal writings from Altar Shadows.