ASHES AGAINST THE GRAIN

We recently got a breakthrough of Agalloch's Ashes Against The Grain in the Bonnek household. Meaning my beloved is digging this as well now, so I can play it at any time I want (sometimes I even get requests!), which is just fantastic because I would play this album all day long if I had the time for it.

It wasn't love at first sight though (the album I mean). It sure sounded interesting but at first I thought it to be too similar to Opeth. I couldn't be more wrong. Sure it has heavy and harsh parts mixed with gentle and melodic parts but the way this music flows is entirely different from Opeth.

What you get with Agalloch is an organic and spontaneous flow of music that goes through the motions step by step: it builds up tension and releases it, it works up from gentle atmospheric to big orgiastic climaxes. Opeth is much more mathematical: 4 bars loud, 8 bars of acoustics, 4 bars loud again 16 bars something else and so on. In fact, with reference to composition, Agalloch sits closer to bands like Anathema or Neurosis, who, even though they create very different music, they both share that same natural flow.

The reason I spent so long on that argument is because it explains why you need to sit through this entire album in one go. Each individual song is great by itself but together they build up to something that is larger then life. Actually, despite the sparse instrumentation this album contains the most epic music I've ever heard.

So I will consciously avoid a track by track overview. I have the impression that the Agalloch ratings suffer because of the difficulty to categorize them. People are bound to approach them with entirely wrong expectations and preconceptions. Still, some may be attracted nevertheless. The music is brilliant, the epic feel is out of this world but never bombastic, the chants are gorgeous and the production is at the same crystal clear, rough and organic. And I am quite sure there is not one other band that can be compared to them. What more do you need?