AGALLOCH - Marrow Of The Spirit

Having gotten past the pastoral interlude of "The White Ep", Agalloch return to the fury and intensity of their earlier work, shaping "Marrow Of The Spirit" into a fresco of epic proportions.

With the black-metal component well to the fore, the fourth official chapter in the Portland (Oregon) quartet's saga is probably their most aggressive moment yet, even though the usual dark-folk and post-rock elements are still present. New drummer Aesop Dekker already sounds at ease, pulsing and precise, never overplaying as he follows the twists and turns of his three bandmates, and certainly skilled at underscoring the (also metaphorical) weight of these six panels.

And yet it all begins quietly, with the idyllic landscape (birdsong and running water) of "They Escaped The Weight Of Darkness", its gloom amplified by the desolate resonance of Jackie Perez Gratz's cello. Desolation, in any case, is the essence of the whole record, even as flashes of fury try to mask it, as happens right away in "Into the Painted Grey", with whirling black runs (made even more savage by John Haughm's scream) and a few sparse crystalline clearings.

This fusion of power and surrender - as we know - is essentially what makes their music so evocative; and the skeletal resignation of "To Drown", with rough Eastern-tinged flourishes at the close, marks the furthest edge of this fusion-tension. It's certainly a trait that can easily run into trouble, for instance when the trick is repeated without much imagination and in a more easily digestible format ("Ghosts Of The Midwinter Fires", for example). It works better - though not by much - when the disruptive surges and progressive dynamics of "The Watcher's Monolith" make the existential mood of this sound even more legible.

A band that clearly knows its craft (never any doubt about that!), but one that, this time around, doesn't quite win us over as much as usual. Still, "Black Lake Nidstång" ranks among the best tracks of the year, its slow, desperate crescendo morphing into a grandiloquent, spacey vista worthy of Alan Parsons Project.

Aside from that, it's an album that's certainly pleasant to listen to, with a few genuinely successful moments, but in my view a step below its three predecessors.

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17/11/2010