MARROW OF THE SPIRIT

This is generally a misunderstood album by Agalloch fans. It doesn't feature the purity and inescapable solitude of 'Ashes', neither it features the examination of natural beauty like in 'The Mantle'. What it does however, is finally achieving Agalloch's vision of translating vision into sound. When the album starts with the cello piece, you are instantly dragged into a path you do not know leads. I don't think I've ever seen the cover art resembling the album athmosphere so well. When this grandeur path ends, a valley of horror, fear and death opens up with 'Into The Painted Grey' - one of my favourite Agalloch pieces. The first blastbeats and amazing tremolo picking melody transfers your mind to another plane. It's good that Agalloch decided to ditch the overproduced digital style and try something raw and violent. It certainly works here. 'Into The Painted Grey' dismantle into very athmospheric guitar work and toms start to come in and at last the vocals along with some standard Agalloch riffing. This song goes through many stages finally achieving a magnificent climax at the end.

'The Watcher's Monolith' starts slowly while holding the tension from the last song and it climaxes into very simple melody accompanied by heavy pounding drums and vocals. The outro serves as a path to the next song: 'Black Lake Nidstång' . This horrifying masterpiece showcases why Agalloch is so loved by many. The screaming 'Nithing Pole' vocals are absolutely terrific in every way. At first listen this song might seem rather dragging but everything here serves a purpose.

'Ghost of Midwinter Fires' is the weakest song unfortunately. I wished they had thought of something more original after the previous masterpiece. It's not bad of course, but somehow it doesn't succesfully hold the athmosphere set by previous songs.

'To Drown' is a post-rock type of song where Haughm whispers his epic lyrics. This song is so haunting and beautiful that I cannot put the emotions into words. Listen to yourself!

5/5 - a masterpiece

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