THE MANTLE

I must thank to this great server for bringing us so much information about our favorite style of rock music and also for allowing me to come to know a big amount of great music bands which I might have never run across. One of these great bands is an american outfit with a strange name AGALLOCH and thankgod I haven't missed this gem of the progmetal genre and also I have a pleasure from discovering of their unique music.

To this day AGALLOCH had delivered three studio albums and The Mantle is middle of them. I own all three albums but for a review I've chosen The Mantle because I think it's the best for someone who has never heard this band before and who wants to get into picture what is their music about. Of course that doesn't mean it's their best (which is a subjective rating though) but in my opinion it's the easiest album for getting into.

What is characteristic for their music isn't any exhibition of instrumental skills of each member of the band ala Dream Theater but rather an accent to emotional impact onto a listener. What the listener has to do isn't just observe the form of the compositions and look for technical finesses but just close his eyes and let the music "draw". What most people will probably get are scenes of a snow-covered desolated landscape interlaced with bare trees. After all the cover of the album itself admonishes us to such images.

The most parts of the songs are instrumental and when a "singing" appears it's a mysterious, covered voice somewhere between growling and storytelling - and here a problem may arise for someone. The voices are very eerie but instead of bringing a melody, they rather sketch the atmosphere induced by the instrumental section and they just do a great job in that.

The album begins with "A Celebration For The Death Of Man..." with its repeated theme played by acoustic guitar and foreshadows in what style the whole album will be. These repetitions, so characteristic for post-rock bands like Godspeed You Black Emperor!, make the atmosphere heavy and create a tense in the listener that disappears with first measures of the next song "In The Shadow Of Our Pale Companion". This song, probably the main theme of the album, features an unique joint of neo-folk with gothic- metal and it's the best for a characterization of AGALLOCH's music. For me it's one of the best song from this band and is ideal as an "opener". Then "Odal" follows, strictly instrumental song, and it continues with drawing the pictures started in the previous song. Now comes "I Am The Wooden Doors", one of the two faster songs on the album and it reduces the tense of thick atmosphere from the beginning of the album. The next song is "The Lodge", again strictly instrumental song, in which is introduced a very interesting wooden and hollow sound that starts to determine the rhythm of the song and that shows up at the end of the album again. After this song the beat speeds up in "You Were But A Ghost In My Arms" and then comes "The Hawthorne Passage" which we can consider as a climax of the album. This composition is a demonstration of compositional and instrumental skills of the band and for the song itself it's good to own this album. After this comes "...And The Great Cold Death Of The Earth" that reminds us the main themes of the albums that ends with "A Desolation Song", the most folk- metal song ever made by AGALLOCH. But here I have one complaint - althought it's a very good song, it doesn't fit in the whole concept of the album in my opinion and it breaks its flow. If AGALLOCH closed the album with the previous song it would be much better. In this way the last song rather sounds as a bonus track. But it is the only flaw I see on this great album.

Summary - The Mantle by AGALLOCH is in my opinion one of the best albums of the year 2002, if not one of the best in decade, and I recommend it to all fans of unconventional music. Five stars. Period.