So here we are at the number one album of the year. Agalloch's Marrow of the Spirit. Although the album did only come out last month, I've still had enough time to develop something to say about this record. I tried to write something about it when it first leaked and a month and a half later here I am typing aimlessly on my blog about it and still am struggling on what to say about it and it's my goddamn album of the year and one of the best metal albums in the last 10 years and could possibly be one of the best metal albums of the next 10 years...
I'll try my best. Bear with me.
A quick introduction:
Agalloch are a rare and special band. They are maybe the most well known unknown band. They are one of the only bands I can think of recently where their entire discography is praised and spoken very highly of. Almost every band has that one or two CDs where almost all of the fan base can agree is the best record, and every band has that one CD that everyone says "...Fucking sucks, what a disappointment."
Yeah, that doesn't happen with Agalloch. The beginning, Pale Folklore, everyone loves. It's raw, unique for black metal, and is beautiful. The Mantle shows Agalloch stepping out and doing new things already, throwing in post-rock influence and even more melody. On Ashes Against the Grain Agalloch turn it up and write heavier songs with tighter production, and still, this fantastic record is not disliked by fans of music.
Not one of these CDs is their "best" cd. Any of these three could be any one's favorite. They're all incredible, diverse, and innovative on so many levels. Before I heard the new record, many people were already stating this may be their best release. I was skeptical due to that just being absurd. That was until of course I finally embarked on the journey...
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The album is meant to be a journey and it's musically obvious. Marrow of the Spirit begins with you floating in a river or creek in the middle of a frost bitten forest, literally where the album artwork displays.
A cello is heard and foreshadows later melodies throughout the CD. You can feel something huge is going to happen.
So where will this river take us?
After an abrasive analog produced drum fill we are sucked into a vortex of otherworldly and disgustingly frigid black metal. But not the black metal we heard on the previous records. I'm talking about primitive, fuck-all, black metal. When I describe this song as some sort of vortex, I literally get this imagery when hearing this song. I feel as if I'm being sucked into another dimension of music, "Into the Painted Grey".
The song basically rapes you. It penetrates you with its' powerful blast beats, and dry tremolo guitars, makes you want to cry with it's ambient seeping guitar melodies and reverb soaked tremolo guitars, holds you down and suffocates you with utterly dense bass tones and doomy chords, and frightens you with John Hauhgm's even more twisted rasping vocals than ever before and it seems to never ever end and you feel sick for never wanting it to.
This may be the best Agalloch song ever written. But there's still four more songs.
When the 13 minute song finally ends after a two minute blast beat climax, it feels as if time and reality suddenly become apparent in your life again, but you can't remember when both of these things slipped away from you. You only realize suddenly that you're ONLY just listening to music for a second until "The Watcher's Monolith" PERFECTLY introduces itself to you after the beautiful chaos of the previous track.
Somber and powerful melodic doom blankets you, and it's a very, very heavy blanket. It's almost night time and you're walking through the woods. The raw guitar tones sound like their being amplified by the trees. The grass grows out toward you, and the last beams of sun slip through the canopy atop. The depths of nature are composing a song for you.
This song sounds familiar for Agalloch but has a more mature and confident feel to it. One moment, it's heartbreaking, and the next it's triumphant. It's slower, and constructed with perfection, and is phenomenal. It's almost midnight, crickets chirp, and a haunting piano melody plays as the song concludes.
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There are certain AWEsome aspects of life where our brains capacity is reached when we try to comprehend them. This mostly happens for the idea of life itself and trying to figure out who we are and why we are.
When one person is challenged to write about one of the greatest songs of all time, that person may not have the intelligence required to deliver such a feat. One of those people is me.
If you know me you know that when I love something, I love it. I'm PASSIONATE about things, and you can hear it in my voice when I talk about them. The only way I could express my feelings for a song such as "Black Lake Nidstang" by Agalloch would be if I were in the early stages of alcoholism.
Although, I'd make the song sound quite pretentious by doing that, I'd at least get SOMETHING out.
So let me grab a drink...
"Written in the waters..."
"Black Lake Nidstang" is a journey on its own; an 18 minute journey through a forest upon a mountain at midnight that leads to a lake of the dead. The sound of drums echo in the distance through the trees. It sounds like a warning of sorts, or some kind of calling. It could be a warning for what you're about to experience.
The song transitions from a dark and rather sinister introduction of acoustic guitar to seamlessly heart wrenching melodies and seeping wails of ambient guitars until opening up into the main section of the song.
Whispers from the dead occupy the first verse and the melodies are still only a taste of the despair you're about to witness via music.
Literally, the middle of this song is one of the greatest moments in music ever. It resides nearby the last few minutes of "Lateralus" the song by Tool. Except this part doesn't make me want to tear out of my body and become some sort of super being. The middle part of this song is one of the most devastatingly emotional moments you may ever hear. It is the equivalent of watching the saddest scene in a movie, but instead, listening to the most despairingly powerful moment.
As John Haughm's depressive black metal vocals shock your ears, his guitar plays the earlier leads but slightly off tune, just to make the part that much more fucked up. I can't help but get chills every time this part consumes me. It takes me lower and lower with the sludging of the bass line, and shrieking of the guitars. The vocals still overwhelm me every time. I cannot fathom how one recorded these vocals without having tears in his eye. The sound of the Nidstang shrieking out through the night, "YOU CREATED THE STARS AND GAVE BIRTH TO ALL THE HEAVENS; THE DARKNESS OF SPACE AND TIME. SO GO TO THE NIGHTSIDE END BELOW!!!"
Heaven. The darkness of space and time. Quite possibly the imagery you get when the moog sets in moments later, and suddenly a cascading of spacial guitars seeps in, like the edges of nebulas suddenly to fill in the void. Are we still listening to Agalloch? The trance inducing guitars, what sounds like five of them on the most gorgeous of looping reverb suddenly is halted by an onslaught of heavy bass and tremolo and we're brought to the conclusion of this masterpiece. The drums transition several times to heighten the already dramatic and suddenly triumphant melodies and the song finally explodes. The delay guitars over the nighttime crickets fade out the final seconds.
The only issue with this song is that no matter what, the next two tracks could never live up to what you just endured. But you keep moving on, now through snow filled woods to find out that "Ghosts of the Midwinter Fires" is a pleasantly classic sounding piece, filled with post-punk-esque, twinkly guitars. The track sounds like a combination of Pale Folklore and Alcest.
Once the track ends, the journey's end is closing in on us as we're back in the cold waters from the opening track, but this time it's different. "To Drown" clearly is trying to represent the sound of drowning in musical form. The somber acoustic guitars and cello sound remorseful as if they know what's about to happen to you. Suddenly they twist and turn and drag you deeper beneath the ice cold water, the intensity of the cello's strings heightening as your inability to hold your breath becomes stronger. This section of the song sounds like Godspeed You! Black Emperor decided to stop by the studio for a session. Finally the song concludes with you washing up on shore, the combination of the lake and the lakes ripples softly crashing on land, an oddly incredibly satisfying sound to end Marrow of the Spirit.
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So there you have it. The album of the year. Now, I admit, this post was more of a babbling like my original Envy, Recitation post was a couple months ago when I first heard that. It wasn't until I had some extra time with it that I was able to somehow connect with that record on a more personal level other than just really enjoying it. That may never happen with this record, so for now, you got to hear me just express my admiration for the quality of unbelievable musicianship and song writing on Marrow of the Spirit. Maybe one day down the road I'll put this record on my mp3 player and wander deep into the woods at night and have something more personal and interesting to read. But for now, this album is just better than anything else that came out this year and you should no doubt listen to this if you're a fan of music at all.
Happy New Year everybody!
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