•
Rating:
Agalloch know how to amaze. Far too well. They did it in '99 with their debut Pale Folklore, and they do it again three years later with their next album, The Mantle. Only two albums to their name, yet the band from Portland already knows which strings to pull to stir something within the soul of the listener. They do so with 9 tracks of absolute melancholy, where the acoustic guitar reigns, creating gray and dreamy atmospheres, combined with metal elements such as double pedal, a distorted guitar, and Haughm's voice; a voice that can effortlessly range from a whispered scream to a clean, "nasal" singing, down to rolling into a sigh. All while winking (with extreme personality) at times to Katatonia, at times to a certain Finnish "folk metal" scene, if it can indeed be called a scene.
Songs full of emotion, those of Agalloch; everything here is at the mercy of arpeggios, slow and moving melodies, dark progressions alternating with driven pieces ("I Am The Wooden Doors"), with instrumentals that have a dreamlike flavor ("Odal") and almost hypnotic ("The Lodge"), not to mention a song like "In The Shadow Of Our Pale Companion," a slow and long 14-minute suite that knows how to reach deep into the soul. Cathartic atmosphere, enveloping melancholy, clear decadence. Everything here is soaked in a subtle anguish and air as sulfurous as it is nostalgic. Do you love music that can deeply convey emotions (rhetorical question, obviously)? Then The Mantle is not an album to ignore.
Not a masterpiece, no. I don't think it has the necessary criteria to be defined as such. In short, interesting but certainly not essential. And yet The Mantle is an album I have lived more than listened to, and as naive and exaggerated as this statement may seem, it rightly belongs among those albums that made me realize how important music is (for me and I believe for everyone) to face life. Because to face it, we have a constant need for a healthy psychophysical balance... And who can provide that better than music? It's not just a simple pastime, and those who love it know this all too well.
Music for those who want to travel with their mind, music to be savored gently and unhurriedly. Recommended with open arms.
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
04 I Am the Wooden Doors (06:11)
When all is withered and torn
And all has perished and fallen
These great wooden doors shall remain closed. . .
When the heart is a grave filled with blood
And the soul is a cold and haunted shall of lost hope
When the voice of pride has been silenced
And dignity's fires are but cinders
. . .their grandeur shall remain untainted
It is this grandeur that protects the spirit within
From the plight of this broken world, from the wounds in her song
I wish to die with my will and spirit intact
The will that inspired me to write these words
Seek not the fallen to unlock these wooden doors
06 You Were but a Ghost in My Arms (09:14)
Like snowfall, you cry a silent storm
Your tears paint rivers on this oaken wall...
Amber nectar, misery ichor
...cascading in streams of hallowed form
For each stain, a forsaken shadow
You are the lugubrious spirit
Etched in the oak of wonder
You are the sullen voice and silent storm
Each night I lay
Awakened by her shivering silent voice
From the shapes in the corridor walls.
It pierces the solitude like that of a distant scream
In the pitch-black forest of my delusion...
With each passing day, a deeper grave...
"Why did you leave me to die?"
"Why did you abandon me?"
"Why did you walk away and leave me bitterly yearning?"
Her haunting, contorted despair was etched into the wood's grain
Though fire rages within me, no fire burns fiercer than her desire
The shape whispers my name...
I damn this oak!
I damn her sorrow!
I damn these oaken corridors
That bear the ghosts of those I've thrown away!
Though tempted I am to caress her texture divine
And taste her pain sweet, sweet like brandy wine;
I must burn these halls, these corridors
And silence her shrill, tormenting voice
...forever...
Like snowfall, you cried a silent storm
No tears stain this dust in my hands
But from this ashen gray, her voice still
Whispers my name...
You were the lugubrious spirit
Who haunted the oak of wonder
You were the geist that warned this frozen silent storm
You were but a ghost in my arms
09 A Desolation Song (05:08)
Here I sit at the fire
Liquor's bitter flames warm my languid soul
Here I drink alone and remember
A graven life, the stain of her memory
In this cup, love's poison
For love is the poison of life
Tip the cup, feed the fire,
And forget about useless fucking hope. . .
Lost in the desolation of love
The passions we reap and sow
Lost in the desolation of life
This path that we walk. . .
Here's to love, the sickness
The great martyr of the soul
Here's to life, the vice
The great herald of misery
In this cup, spiritus frumenti
For this is the nectar of the spirit
Quench the thirst, drown the sorrow
And forget about cold yesterdays. . .
Lost in the desolation of love
The passions we reap and sow
Lost in the desolation of life
This path that we walk. . .
Lost in the desolation of love
The sorrows we reap and sow
Lost in the desolation of life
The path that we walk. . .
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By stargazer
"Rarely has a CD of over 60 minutes managed not to bore me, thanks to the emotional charge of every single song, which seems to speak to the listener’s soul."
"If this grand panorama before me is what you call God... Then God is not dead"
