The Bad Penny (beta)

“As time passes on, life begins to lose its taste and the walls start to close in. In order to ‘survive’ in this sea of nausea and distaste, we have to search for some anchor and stay focused on something. All the divagations and reflections find its place in this form of art.”

-Altarage’s Javier Gálvez

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On Monday, we gifted you with a list of the 10 most charming musical performances featuring humans and Muppets. Today we present you with an interview that could not be more polar opposite.

“It seems like the collapse is closer, we are a despicable kind, we deserve the worst of all fates, so if anyone wants to push the play button when the buildings crumble and the flames engulf us, it’s fine to me,” says Javier Gálvez (a.k.a. GLVZ) – guitarist and vocalist for experimental and dissonant death metal band Altarage from Bilbao, Spain – about the state of the world.

Now in their 11th year, the Basque brigade are putting out their seventh studio record, Cogwheel, on Friday through Sentient Ruin and Doomentia Records. The labels are touting the record as Altarage’s “longest and most sonically colossal release to date, and possibly, their most experimental and abysmal since Sol Corrupto.”

Anchored by “Ichor,” a nearly 15-minute song that is the sixth of seven songs on the record, Cogwheel evokes the bleakest churning of post-industrialism, a torturous wasteland in which any oasis that may exist is well out of view or range. Pushing the limits of death metal against the wall of doom, Altarage prove themselves singular once again, conjuring the spirit of Meshuggah’s own “Broken Cog” while draped in the robes of Sunn0))).

Sadly, Altarage’s Cogwheel is the soundtrack of our times. And we have no one to blame but ourselves. With that cheery sentiment in mind, we questioned and Gálvez answered a bunch of questions in an effort to understand what keeps Altarage plowing ahead when all seems is lost.

(This interview is not abridged, however edits were made for clarity.)

Altarage have always seemed to me to be an “old soul” of a band. Translation: You’re still young but wise beyond your years. Do you ever think of yourselves that way?

Not sure about being young anymore because of our actual age.

I can tell you that this band could not have [existed] years earlier because of the mindset we have at this stage of life. All our reflections and questions about existence are now spread on the table, when years back I could not have given enough fucks about it; and the music being the perfect match. Again, [it would have been] impossible to write like this before. 

What did Altarage accomplish as a band with Cogwheel that you hadn’t before and/or hadn’t thought you were capable of doing before?

We are capable of anything we want to do, no question about it. This time it was a bit different because we introduced elements that were present already in our sound. But we left more room for them to breathe, and the artifact sounds massive, making them as important as the riffs of whatever part of the song. So, if you’re looking for a plain death metal record or, like they say these days, “traditional” or “old school,” better look in [an]other place. A few tracks were written around these droning and ambient pieces but, as always, we wrote organically and let things flow without forcing it. Lyrically, I did an exercise in looking back and kind of [writing] bits and pieces of a fucked-up autobiography attached to a long and wearing industrial past activity. 

Do you intend for Altarage music to be the soundtrack to the apocalypse – or, more optimistically, the collapse (and rebuilding) of Western civilization? Or maybe one of the millions of catalysts that would likely be required to set such a ball in motion?

It could be, but we don’t intend [anything] beyond [creating] a sonic landscape and rant about life, death and all that [lies] in between. Anyway, it seems like the collapse is closer, we are a despicable kind, we deserve the worst of all fates, so if anyone wants to push the play button when the buildings crumble and the flames engulf us, it’s fine to me.

Clearly and irrefutably, you ensured that Cogwheel would contain a song – in this case, “Ichor,” which references the blood of Greek gods – that would surf the marketing campaign of the biggest movie of the summer, The Odyssey. When did you realize Cogwheel would be coming out at the same time, who came up with the PR ploy and were there any attempts made to have your deafening 15-minute song featured in the film or at least on the goddam soundtrack?

You’re joking, of course.

Do you ever feel like a band not of this time, or perhaps outside time, because your sound is so unusual and unlike most other metal bands, despite how big the proverbial tent has grown?

Not exactly, but we know that we’re not for everybody, that’s for sure. The thing these days is that we, or at least me, don’t stay aware about what is happening on the outside, musically speaking. I try to focus on my own music. Every now and then you can come across a new band or artist doing something interesting, but usually there is so much repetition and boring stuff that I don’t care about what others are doing. On the other hand, we make harsh noise, hard music, and there is this “extreme metal” term and people, apparently, only looking for really disgusting musical stuff, but when confronting some bands like ours, or one of those acts out there doing something different, folks run away from it like the plague. I mean, what once was the fresh and violent stuff is now the norm, boring-as-fuck music. There are bands and bands, of course, but people keep looking for the safe growl and the random blast beat. We’re not in there. 

Is there a song or riff that you decided not to include on an Altarage album and now regret doing so?

No. When writing, what is thrown in the garbage stays in the garbage, and you move on.

I’ve read quite a bit about Altarage over the past decade and listened to your music for even longer. Pretty sure I haven’t seen the word “anarchist” overtly tied to you, at least in terms of how you decide to define yourselves. But is that term accurate? Too limiting? Both? This statement from your sales sheet seems to suggest the you do. embrace the philosophy: “Remnants and dogmas of tradition, fattened and pulverized under the weight of inevitability to create a new ground zero, scorched and sterilized of orthodoxy, and reseeded with the germs of innovation and expressive rebirth through the convergence of human struggle and musical destruction.”

That’s the way the label sees us, musically speaking. The truth is that, as time goes on, we care less and less about orthodoxy and rules, yes. Never cared, actually. We always do whatever we want the way we want. Guitars and theorists nerds be damned, arguing about how this or that was not correct, the “right” way to do it, timings, tunings, chords… We follow our own path, always looking forward to the next step, our eyes set into the unknown. 

Philosophy does seem to be a topic you frequently touch on in your songs. Is that deliberate or mostly occur organically?

As time passes on, life begins to lose its taste and the walls start to close in. In order to “survive” in this sea of nausea and distaste, we have to search for some anchor and stay focused on something. All the divagations and reflections find its place in this form of art. Personally it’s something I cannot ignore, so, when starting the band back in 2014 and writing the first batch of songs, all this stream of consciousness happened to take over organically. 

What are your top 10 favorite movies?

Not so much into movies these days but ultimately, I’m digging the work of Nicolas Winding Refn.

Reserving my hackiest question for last: If you could alter your age, what would you change it to and why?

I’d go back to the womb and hung myself with the umbilical cord. No pain, no suffering, no more a future wreck.

For more on Altarage, and to buy Cogwheel and merch, go to their profile on Sentient Ruin Laboratories’ website.

This entry was posted on 07/29/2026 at 3:55 pm and is filed under Interviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.