MARROW OF THE SPIRIT

After four years, I have to say that it was well worth the wait. "Marrow Of The Spirit" is one of the band's best albums, along with the supreme masterpiece "The Mantle" and the superb "Ashes Against The Grain".

In this album, we find a whole lot of new elements, that weren't present in previous Agalloch releases: for starters, the album has only six songs, (almost) all of them around ten minutes, if not much more. Stylistically, the album has more Black Metal tastes than the previous albums, with faster, pounding rhythms, played by Aesop Dekker, less clean vocals, sung by band leader John Haugm, one of my favorite Black Metal vocalists, thanks to his intense and high picked voice when singing in growl, and to his emotional, haunting vocals when he sings clean. Furthermore, we have atmospheric electric guitars, and acoustic guitars that sound for the first time like a simple enrichment, without playing a distinctive role. Indeed, "Marrow Of the Spirit" is an Atmospheric Black Metal album, which touches of Folk Metal, Avant Garde, Doom, and even Post-Rock. A very rich album, musically speaking, there's no doubt in that.

"Marrow Of The Spirit" is a distorted, rough, but at times beautiful portrait of bleak nature, particularly concerning whitened forests and mountains. These amazing images the band creates can penetrate you strongly, and you can really feel like you're standing there , alone, in the middle of the woods, with your feet touching soft snow, gazing a frozen stream in front of you, with naked trees surrounding it, in a dark afternoon.

These six songs here are all unique, all in their one way; the intro "They Escaped the Weight Of Darkness", a very long and melancholic one, the haunting and memorable "Into The Painted Grey", possibly my favorite song of this album, "The Watcher's Monolith", a sad sounding Folkish Metal piece, with very beautiful moments, the long "Black Lake Nidstang" one of the most complete and epic Agalloch songs, my least favorite "Ghost Of the Midwinter Fires", even though it has some very impressive moments, and strange, Post Rockish "To Drown". These songs create a very complete and eclectic album, which is so far my favorite album of 2010, along with Kayo Dot's "Coyote".

As a conclusion, I have to admit that it was hard to get into, since it's very long and not very melodic, thus not easy to remember, but when the taste is acquired, you'll see how good this album is. 4.5 stars.