Wednesday, October 31, 2012
For those wondering...
This is the YouTube video that got me into DragonForce, power metal, and metal a little over five years ago. Amazing that it's still available.
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
Ashes Against the Grain
Agalloch is one of the bands that helped get me into black metal. Their craft is a blend of black metal, folk, ambient, and post rock that is as beautiful as Explosions in the Sky and as intricate and ingenious as Opeth or Krallice. This is my current favorite album of theirs, Ashes Against the Grain.
Even just looking at the track list, it's evident this album isn't "normal" in any sense of the word. It consists of four ten-minute epics, one three-part suite, one short interlude, and a twenty-minute bonus track. And, indeed, this is no ordinary composition. This is an album you can lose yourself in, that challenges you to follow its every gnarled twist and turn rather than analyzing it from a safe distance. It has few displays of technical prowess, raw power, or blinding speed, but what it does have is some of the best-composed songs and deepest lyrics of any album I've heard in a long time.
The first track, "Limbs", starts off with a quiet, high-pitched guitar whine before a slow, heavy-hitting guitar and drum rhythm come in. This metal is not fast or intense; it is solid and deep like the earth under your feet. Like the other three epics, "Limbs" has little in the way of conventional song structure; it's main distinguishing feature is its interplay between quiet acoustic passage and plodding metallic heaviness. Unlike traditional black metal, it is bleakly beautiful in the same way a pristine winter landscape is beautiful. The lyrics, which don't begin until halfway through the song, contrast images of human suffering with surreal natural imagery. Lines like The texture of the soul is a liquid that casts a vermillion flood/From a wound carved as an oath; it fills the river bank a sanguine fog. There is also some juxtaposition of human limbs and tree limbs, hence the name.
"Falling Snow" is the song that first got me interested in Agalloch, and its appeal is more immediate. It opens up with some amazingly beautiful guitar melodies over a relatively upbeat, simple drum beat, like the driving of steady snowfall. Unlike "Limbs", which was very on-and-off in its dynamics, "Falling Snow" stays fairly steady throughout its length, though with plenty of variation over the same general mood and tempo. Again its song structure is highly unconventional, but the repetition of some memorable melodies (with different words) plays with the standard verse-chorus form in a musical sense. This song is all about the guitar melodies and all the wonderful interactions between them. The two counterpointing cleanly sung lines are very memorable and exemplify the parallels this song evokes between falling snow and falling blood. (Red birds escape from my wounds and return as falling snow). Lyrically, it could almost fit into Wintersun. After that, "This White Mountain on Which You Will Die" (a reference to a line in "Falling Snow") is a short, instrumental ambient track consisting mainly of a high-pitched wind or choir-like howl over distant rumbling and guitar static. It's surreally stark and beautiful, like looking out over a bottomless abyss with the wind and snow blowing silently around you.
"Fire Above, Ice Below", the third epic, is much slower, like a march, with even more sparse vocals (a total of seven lines) in a mixture of clean and harsh. Both are quite good; John Haughm's harsh vocals are a sort of rasp that is dark but quite intelligible; his clean vocals are indescribably hauntingly beautiful. This song is quieter, more in the vein of post rock than black metal, but after around 6:30 it starts to build and gets pretty intense by the end with a memorable and climactic repeating "ascending" riff in the last two minutes.
"Not Unlike the Waves" plays a bit with doom metal, beginning and ending with a heavy, rolling guitar riff with faint, high-pitched guitar jangling over the top. The colossal-sounding, but fluid pattern gives the overall impression of a colossal ship making its way across turbulent seas. This song is a bit more repetitive (or deliberately monotonous, like waves) because of its frequent use of this riff and others with the same rhythm.
And then the three-part epic, "Our Fortress is Burning...". The first part starts as some low-key, slow piano chords over a distant wind before another, shorter post rock-style piece similar to "Fire Above, Ice Below". The slow-tempo groove is accentuated by a distinctive nine-count series of drum hits before spacing out again with more cool guitar drones over drumrolls. The second part, "Bloodbirds", the only segment with lyrics (six lines), starts off similar to the first with the bass interestingly carrying the melody but builds to the crashing climax of the album within the last few minutes after the vocals drop the title of the album in the last line. The third part, "The Grain", is more of an epilogue, consisting entirely of a slow drone of some kind. It's not beautiful, but it sounds stark and otherworldly, as if after the end of the second part things can never be the same. The lyrics in part II reinforce the themes of the futility of human efforts (The god of man is a failure) in the face of the grandiosity of nature.
The bonus track, "Scars of the Shattered Sky (Our Fortress Has Burned to the Ground)" is like a second, much more satisfying epilogue, encompassing the entire rest of the album and more in nearly twenty of the most epic minutes you will ever experience. This song is a perfect epic because each of its parts truly feels different than the others in a cohesive way, as if you are going on a vast journey. It starts off with more nonmusical ambient music, some sparse clicks and sound effects over a drone like the engine room of the Enterprise. Finally a single string is plucked and a bare, lament-like acoustic melody begins. After a few minutes, the keyboard takes over, playing a truly beautiful and emotional piece that climbs higher and higher before the whole band, rocking their hearts out, slowly fades in. The music they play is upbeat, faster even than "Falling Snow", as if it's been lifted out of the doom and gloom preceding it. Finally it explodes like a firework into a series of phased/modulated drones that slow down before fading into more ambience to end the album. It's not much like the rest of the album, but truly an amazing song on its own and tremendously cathartic.
Ashes Against the Grain is a truly unique composition: an album that feels both organic and cold; desolate and simultaneously lush and beautiful. It is the culmination of Agalloch's eclectic style, transcending the metal/non-metal background, and a feat not soon to be forgotten. This album gets my highest approval.
Even just looking at the track list, it's evident this album isn't "normal" in any sense of the word. It consists of four ten-minute epics, one three-part suite, one short interlude, and a twenty-minute bonus track. And, indeed, this is no ordinary composition. This is an album you can lose yourself in, that challenges you to follow its every gnarled twist and turn rather than analyzing it from a safe distance. It has few displays of technical prowess, raw power, or blinding speed, but what it does have is some of the best-composed songs and deepest lyrics of any album I've heard in a long time.
The first track, "Limbs", starts off with a quiet, high-pitched guitar whine before a slow, heavy-hitting guitar and drum rhythm come in. This metal is not fast or intense; it is solid and deep like the earth under your feet. Like the other three epics, "Limbs" has little in the way of conventional song structure; it's main distinguishing feature is its interplay between quiet acoustic passage and plodding metallic heaviness. Unlike traditional black metal, it is bleakly beautiful in the same way a pristine winter landscape is beautiful. The lyrics, which don't begin until halfway through the song, contrast images of human suffering with surreal natural imagery. Lines like The texture of the soul is a liquid that casts a vermillion flood/From a wound carved as an oath; it fills the river bank a sanguine fog. There is also some juxtaposition of human limbs and tree limbs, hence the name.
"Falling Snow" is the song that first got me interested in Agalloch, and its appeal is more immediate. It opens up with some amazingly beautiful guitar melodies over a relatively upbeat, simple drum beat, like the driving of steady snowfall. Unlike "Limbs", which was very on-and-off in its dynamics, "Falling Snow" stays fairly steady throughout its length, though with plenty of variation over the same general mood and tempo. Again its song structure is highly unconventional, but the repetition of some memorable melodies (with different words) plays with the standard verse-chorus form in a musical sense. This song is all about the guitar melodies and all the wonderful interactions between them. The two counterpointing cleanly sung lines are very memorable and exemplify the parallels this song evokes between falling snow and falling blood. (Red birds escape from my wounds and return as falling snow). Lyrically, it could almost fit into Wintersun. After that, "This White Mountain on Which You Will Die" (a reference to a line in "Falling Snow") is a short, instrumental ambient track consisting mainly of a high-pitched wind or choir-like howl over distant rumbling and guitar static. It's surreally stark and beautiful, like looking out over a bottomless abyss with the wind and snow blowing silently around you.
"Fire Above, Ice Below", the third epic, is much slower, like a march, with even more sparse vocals (a total of seven lines) in a mixture of clean and harsh. Both are quite good; John Haughm's harsh vocals are a sort of rasp that is dark but quite intelligible; his clean vocals are indescribably hauntingly beautiful. This song is quieter, more in the vein of post rock than black metal, but after around 6:30 it starts to build and gets pretty intense by the end with a memorable and climactic repeating "ascending" riff in the last two minutes.
"Not Unlike the Waves" plays a bit with doom metal, beginning and ending with a heavy, rolling guitar riff with faint, high-pitched guitar jangling over the top. The colossal-sounding, but fluid pattern gives the overall impression of a colossal ship making its way across turbulent seas. This song is a bit more repetitive (or deliberately monotonous, like waves) because of its frequent use of this riff and others with the same rhythm.
And then the three-part epic, "Our Fortress is Burning...". The first part starts as some low-key, slow piano chords over a distant wind before another, shorter post rock-style piece similar to "Fire Above, Ice Below". The slow-tempo groove is accentuated by a distinctive nine-count series of drum hits before spacing out again with more cool guitar drones over drumrolls. The second part, "Bloodbirds", the only segment with lyrics (six lines), starts off similar to the first with the bass interestingly carrying the melody but builds to the crashing climax of the album within the last few minutes after the vocals drop the title of the album in the last line. The third part, "The Grain", is more of an epilogue, consisting entirely of a slow drone of some kind. It's not beautiful, but it sounds stark and otherworldly, as if after the end of the second part things can never be the same. The lyrics in part II reinforce the themes of the futility of human efforts (The god of man is a failure) in the face of the grandiosity of nature.
The bonus track, "Scars of the Shattered Sky (Our Fortress Has Burned to the Ground)" is like a second, much more satisfying epilogue, encompassing the entire rest of the album and more in nearly twenty of the most epic minutes you will ever experience. This song is a perfect epic because each of its parts truly feels different than the others in a cohesive way, as if you are going on a vast journey. It starts off with more nonmusical ambient music, some sparse clicks and sound effects over a drone like the engine room of the Enterprise. Finally a single string is plucked and a bare, lament-like acoustic melody begins. After a few minutes, the keyboard takes over, playing a truly beautiful and emotional piece that climbs higher and higher before the whole band, rocking their hearts out, slowly fades in. The music they play is upbeat, faster even than "Falling Snow", as if it's been lifted out of the doom and gloom preceding it. Finally it explodes like a firework into a series of phased/modulated drones that slow down before fading into more ambience to end the album. It's not much like the rest of the album, but truly an amazing song on its own and tremendously cathartic.
Ashes Against the Grain is a truly unique composition: an album that feels both organic and cold; desolate and simultaneously lush and beautiful. It is the culmination of Agalloch's eclectic style, transcending the metal/non-metal background, and a feat not soon to be forgotten. This album gets my highest approval.
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