Agalloch
Ashes Against The Grain

THE REVIEW

Better to stay home today: it's raining. There's not even electricity, a cable must have been damaged... imagine that. Better to get into bed, it's cold too and not even the radiators can warm me properly. Before going to bed, I take the CD player... what should I put on? (Agalloch): a voice echoes in my head... I decide to heed it, after all I have nothing to lose, at most they'll lock me up (what are you saying? Do you hear yourself when you talk? -laugh-) a laugh echoes in my head: I collapse...

Rain... I can feel its icy beat on my skin... I'm not afraid. I climb up... ever higher up the hill of my life... just a moment of rest and off I go, I climb that last fragile (?) step and here I am at the top: everything explodes with beauty and fear... immense expanses of trees, lakes: all in the nothingness of a moment... a unique moment of joy and sadness, a unique moment of life. Everything dies. I decide to take flight: I fall down enveloped in a whirlwind of silences in the pale greyness of those last moments of life; I am like the snow: soft, white, icy... I find myself at the top of the mountain (?): I haven't fallen. How is it possible? Am I perhaps responsible for my choices? Is everything written? I refuse to believe... yet I feel life leaving me: am I dying? NO! Stand up dog! Stand up damn it! Fight life, it cannot overpower you! You're a weakling... (NO! I am not weak); nothingness, you are nothing (SHUT UP! bastard you don't know me! SHUT UP!)... I find myself on a distant beach: forgotten by god. Clouds approach menacingly: better enter the forest (an island?). Trees taller than 100 meters, fruits of a land not mine... everything disappears (everything disappears?)... everything burns (everything burns?). The cities of man swept away by the fury of nature (!). Everything dies. There is no more hope, there is no more life... I am alone........ (wake up!)........ (wake up!).........

My room? Yes... I must go to bed: (-laugh-)...

Farewell.