AGALLOCH — The Grey EP (review)

AGALLOCH — The Grey EP album cover EP · 2004 · Non-Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
2/5 ·
Conor Fynes
'The Grey' - Agalloch (4/10)

As a great way to contrast the much lighter and folkier 'White EP,' Agalloch wanders deeply into the realm of doom, drone and dark ambient with 'The Grey.' Taking two songs from their acclaimed masterpiece 'The Mantle' and warping them into different compositions altogether, 'The Grey' can easily be considered a piece of work of it's own. In fact, unless one listens very carefully to the music here, it's hard to tell these pieces were derived from other tracks at all.

In any case, this is not the most exciting or emotive twenty minute EP I have heard; it is certainly not meant for more than a few listens in a sitting. In any case, this is an interesting experiment from the band. Taking an acoustic interlude ('The Lodge') from their studio length album and expanding it over the course of almost fourteen minutes into a doom epic is pretty impressive. In any case, almost all of the riffs are taken from the original song. Things are made alot heavier, and the use of repetition is very heavy here, seeing as they are taking four minutes of material and stretching it out for so long. In any case, it gives a completely new perspective on the riffs, although someone who was not a fan of the band would not realize and appreciate the thought that went into the creation.

The second track 'Odal (Nothing)' is an even further cry from it's original song. It is a subdued ambient track, much in a lower key vein of the noise music opus the band fashioned at the end of 'Ashes Against The Grain.' However, things here aren't nearly as interesting or engaging as they were on other sound experiments the band has done in the past, making this new apparent rendition of 'Odal' pretty forgettable.

Not poor by any standard, but not a piece of work I would recommend to someone who was not a fan of Agalloch to begin with. For a much more complete and standalone EP, try 'The White.'
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