Agalloch - Marrow of the Spirit

TRACK LISTING

1.  They Escaped the Weight of
     Darkness
2.  Into the Painted Grey
3.  The Watcher's Monolith
4.  Black Lake Nidstang
5.  Ghosts of the Midwinter Fires
6.  To Drown

Total playing time:  01:05:33

December 15, 2010

Reviewer: Jesse

Few bands in metal are able to build anticipation like Agalloch can.  I’m not just talking about full-length album releases, but limited edition box sets, demo re-releases, vinyls and of course their live shows.  Everything Agalloch does is met with incredibly high expectations and an anticipation factor that’s just through the roof.  They’ve mastered the art of scarcity as well as mastering their own entirely unique sound and the union of these traits is what has created arguably the most die-hard and loyal fan base underground metal has ever seen.  I know because I’m one of them and I’ve seen it on the faces of the fans at shows and the prices on Ebay.  Now of course, the only way a band like Agalloch can continue to create such a fever around themselves is by actually delivering on these lofty expectations, which they absolutely have in every way possible.  Their live shows are generally flawless and full of complete emotion, their vinyls and box sets are of exquisite quality and their full-length albums are more than what the fans could have asked for all the while maintaining every ounce of their individual sound.

So, that said and as a dyed-in-the-wool Agalloch fanboy who has flown half-way across the country multiple times to see them, I can’t ignore nor can I stubbornly convince myself that what I’m feeling after many listens to Marrow of the Spirit isn’t that of disappointment.  Granted, a “disappointing” Agalloch album is still better than the majority of the field and it certainly isn’t bad, it just falls a little short of my own expectations.  On to the album…

After a fairly ho-hum intro track, “Into the Painted Grey” kicks off the album at full speed with blast beats not normally found on an Agalloch song, but then again, Aesop Dekker is manning the kit this time around, so aggressive drumming should be expected.  Stopping abruptly, the next segment of the song introduces you to what was the very first red flag to my ears: a thin sounding, tinny and abrasive guitar tone that I haven’t heard them use before which seems so out of place and unnecessary.  In fact, I was instantly reminded of the opening section to “The Dreadful Hours” by My Dying Bride, just a little faster.  Thankfully, it doesn’t run amok throughout and “Into the Painted Grey” is actually a really great song that builds a very impressive crescendo.

Next is in my opinion, the highlight of the album, “The Watcher’s Monolith.”  I’m sure plenty of people just wrote me off right there because the majority opinion all over the internet is that the next track is clearly the highlight, but I’ll get there in a second.  “The Watcher’s Monolith” has a very accessible sound and structure to it and I’ve called it the “Falling Snow” of Marrow of the Spirit, only better.  It’ll be a crowd favorite at their live shows because it’s easy to sing along with and has a highly catchy rhythm and “chorus” if you will.  Both “The Watcher’s Monolith” and “Into the Painted Grey” continue that post-rock infused black metal style that Agalloch did so perfectly on Ashes Against the Grain just slightly more aggressive.

It’s at this point that the album takes quite a turn and is where I just have not been able to keep up with.  “Black Lake Nidstang” is a seventeen minute, crushingly powerful song of the likes that no one could have been ready for.  For the first ten minutes, it’s Agalloch doing a hauntingly emotional doom song that will just send shivers to the top of your head and stay there.  John Haughm breaks into a vocal segment of agonized and tortured singing with his voice cracking from emotion.  The song builds itself up and crashes down with focused and determined energy, leveling the listener with a destructive force that I didn’t know Agalloch was capable of harnessing.  Then at about ten and a half minutes, it drifts off into some theatric moog synth-riddled, faux-prog seventies flashback waste of time for the better of four minutes only to come back to the song with Haughm snarling us back to our senses just before the song ends.  This is where I ask, why?  What was that?  “Black Lake Nidstang” had the potential to be the best song they’ve ever written but instead, it turned into some kind of wankery highbrow head-case of seventeen minutes.  I listened to it over and over, trying to get that “click” to show itself so that it would make sense to me, but all I kept hearing was a song committing suicide.

“Ghosts of the Midwinter Fires” brings us back to the original sound of the first two songs, but is probably the most forgettable track on the entire album.  Not entirely focused and I can’t help but hear The Cure for the first minute or so.  I did like that they used that same guitar sound from “The Melancholy Spirit” which brought back Pale Folklore to these ears.  It was then that I realized that I had been hearing an extremely similar tone in the guitars this entire time: it was that same clean guitar sound from Pale Folklore only with rougher production.  The closing track, “To Drown” just gets a big “meh” from me.  It’s basically an instrumental aside from the lyrics spoken at the beginning but is more of an ambient instrumental, if that makes sense.  There’s a defined riff that gets repeated over and over which honestly does evoke a picture in my head of someone falling to the bottom of a lake, grasping out in terror to save his or herself which makes the song quite eerie.  It’s the same melody used in the intro track by a cello, so that was in a sense some kind of foreshadowing.

There’s nothing wrong with Marrow of the Spirit, it just wasn’t the right Agalloch album for me.  They haven’t lost any talent or drive for creating music and are clearly pushing their own envelope to places yet unseen by them which is all anyone can ask.  Push yourself, don’t tread water and don’t be content to stay in one spot even though it’s going to be impossible to keep everyone along with you.  I know they’re far from done.

Release Date: November 23, 2010
Label: Profound Lore

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