AGALLOCH — Ashes Against the Grain (review)

AGALLOCH — Ashes Against the Grain album cover Album · 2006 · Folk Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
3/5 ·
Vim Fuego
The difference between your average black metal band and Agalloch is like the difference between the populist fiction of Dan Brown’s ‘The Da Vinci Code’ and a literary classic like Harper Lee’s ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’. Other bands write songs. Agalloch compose symphonies in miniature. Agalloch’s third full length album ‘Ashes against the Grain’ meshes metal seamlessly with classical instrumentation, ambient vistas, and powerful dynamics. Despite the complexity of the songs and the multi-faceted influences, this is still undoubtedly a metal album. ‘Limbs’ begins with an alternative rock sounding intro leads into a gothic acoustic section, with electric guitars playing like a distant echo, and builds to a doom crescendo. Then John Haughm opens his mouth and unleashes an abrasive vocal tirade, and without the listener realising it, the song has become distinctly black metal in character. Suddenly it breaks into disconsolate acoustics, and then the dread-laden music returns. Second track ‘Falling Snow’ throws in a livelier, almost hopeful riff, to contrast the previous song. It has less of the complexity, instead relying on a forcible beat, powered by driving double kick drums and a cascade of cymbals. Haughm also introduces vocal contrast, with a second voice of monastic clarity. This definitely isn’t music for anyone wanting a simple three-minute blast of high tempo metal. Only the ambient ‘This White Mountain on Which You Will Die’ clocks under five minutes, and several tracks approach in excess of double that. There is also an elemental, natural theme running through the album, interwoven with martial motifs. ‘Our Fortress Is Burning...’, ‘Bloodbirds’ and ‘The Grain’ form an epic trilogy to close the album. ‘Our Fortress Is Burning’ seems like a gentle instrumental, but has some tormented effects playing behind the main melody. ‘Bloodbirds’ continues with a dreamy air to it, and eventually hits a multi-layered guitar overdrive. Huge slabs of distortion and guitar effects grate together like tectonic plates on ‘The Grain’, eventually grinding down to nothingness and fading into the ether. This is an album to play to non-metal fans who think metal is all noise, and non-black metal metal fans who love to mock badgers in bullet belts. The music is not entirely in your face, instead swelling from humble beginnings, but scales some unexpected extremes. Only the cuts and contrasts allow you to realise how far Agalloch has taken you. Anyone undertaking the journey of this album will feel more than fulfilled.
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