Marrow Of The Spirit - Agalloch (2010)

Ideated From: “Essential winter albums” on Treble

A quick side note about metal subgenres. Agalloch has several genre labels attached to them, as most bands do. But I think they’re generally considered to be “black metal.” What is black metal? You can get a lot of different answers, and you can get people really mad by suggesting something they think is wrong. But in my view, anyway, the music generally is built on a monolithic bed of fast drumming and bass that doesn’t change rhythm too often (as opposed to a lot of death metal, for instance, where the drum pattern often changes every few measures). On top of that, you get soaring angry guitars in the highest registers, and singing that often sounds like high-pitched screaming. That high end is, I think, what gives black metal that “icy” sound, which is why it’s perfect winter music.

I said when I wrote up the Haughm solo project that Agalloch were one of my favorite metal bands, and I wasn’t kidding. So it’s fitting that they’re the first artist that I’ve double-dipped on, at least if you count that solo record.

I often like my metal to be recorded crisply and cleanly, so you can distinguish the different instruments. They intentionally recorded this album in a way that blends everyone together, but it works very well regardless. Instead of sounding murky as you might expect, the sound is more like a solid wall that gets the details painted on top.

There’s a lot more on offer than straight-up black metal. There are long and beautiful instrumental passages that add to a wintery atmosphere but take on their own flavor. There are moments when the band stops to breathe before turning things up even louder. There are moments when they bug out entirely into something much more trance-like and meditative. There are even bits and pieces of other metal subgenres, especially folk and doom metal, that are done as well as anyone and integrated seamlessly.

Tracks I Liked:

Into The Painted Grey - in my mind, this is the platonic ideal of what black metal sounds like. You can disagree if you want.

The Watcher’s Monolith - a little more trad metal, with some recognizable riffing, but also plenty of that chilly distance.

Ghosts Of The Midwinter Fires - is it possible for something this grandiose to be described as “bouncy?” The last third of this kind of is.