Agalloch: Best album to start with?

[King Richard]

Hell no, Opeth is bottom tier garbage. Most boring death metal band and most boring prog band of all time, at the same time! Tedious riffs, awful lyrics, bland vocalist, horrid clean vocals, laughably shitty transitions, etc.

 

[Vamos]

Sigh...so, Agalloch...

The Mantle is definitely a winner. Have heard it a couple more times already and love it. I think at the moment my favorite song of it has to be "And The Great Cold Death Of The Earth". All are great but this is the one I have been moved to listen to more. Found rather interesting the last bit of the song "The Hawthorne Passage" which is said in spanish (which speak). Nice touch, will need to read the lyrics to better get it's meaning. The EP "Of Stone, Wind, And Pillor" was also great. The acoustic instrumental "Haunting Birds" is beautiful.

I really dig this band so far. Will stick with these three disc some more before moving on to their newer material. Great stuff.

Two questions:

1- I know Agalloch is hard to box into a specific genre but I like to have my iTunes library organised with all tags filled in, including the genre. What would you use for this? As of now I labeled them as "Folk Doom Metal", as they appear to have folk, doom and black metal elements in their sound emphasising each in different ways across their songs.

2- How is the live DVD they released?


Thanks

 

[Mort Divine]

Err... It's their biggest stylistic shift. I'd really question what you are listening for if you think that it's "not pushing into new territory." Perhaps you should focus on the rhythm next time. You apparently ignored that during every listen.

The Mantle -> Ashes is a much bigger shift.

All Marrow did was add accentuate the black metal elements that have always been present.

 

[wandering_taco]

I'm doing a presentation about Agalloch in my nature writing class next month, and a friend and I are going to do an abbreviated arrangement of In the Shadow of Our Pale Companion. Will post a vid somewhere around here if there is one.

As far as my favorites, right now I have to go with the Mantle and Ashes, but I don't actually have Marrow or Faustian echoes so I can't make a judgement on those. I did see most of Marrow performed live, and I did really enjoy that.

 

[Krow]

I've always thought of Agalloch as black metal. Their early albums all had that black metal feel, and I dont think they're any less black metal than some of the more "artsy" black metal bands. That, and from Marrow onward, they've been black metal as fuck.

 

[skeptik]

Agalloch is dark metal.

 

[LuminousAether]

The Mantle -> Ashes is a much bigger shift.

All Marrow did was add accentuate the black metal elements that have always been present.

Agalloch never had a song like Black Lake Nidstang before. Agalloch never had a drummer like Aesop Dekker before. You must not be seeing the forest for the trees. It's definitely a bigger shift than The Mantle to Ashes, which isn't that much of a shift at all.

 

[LuminousAether]

Agalloch is dark metal.

What? No. Agalloch has no doom metal in their sound, and dark metal is a mixture of doom and black metal.

 

[Krow]

Jesus fucking christ can you NOT argue with someone else when you post?

 

[LuminousAether]

Do you want a shoulder to cry on?

 

[Vamos]

What? No. Agalloch has no doom metal in their sound, and dark metal is a mixture of doom and black metal.

So would you say they are black metal then? Folk Black Metal?

 

[crimsonfloyd]

Yeah it's more black metal than anything else. I qualify it as black metal, for what it's worth. I see a decent amount of new elements on Marrow. The weird ambient and key sections in "Black Lake Nidstag" and I can think of another song that sounds anything like "To Drown". It's not reinventing the wheel, but their sound has definitely transformed on each album.

BTW, mooDoom, make sure not to skip The White EP. It is a phenomenal piece of neofolk.

 

[Vamos]

BTW, mooDoom, make sure not to skip The White EP. It is a phenomenal piece of neofolk.

Ah cool, thanks. I'll listen to it together with Ashes once I give Pale, The Mantle and Of Stone a couple of additional spins

 

[Master_Yoda77]

Agalloch is Folk/Dark/Black/Doom/Prog Metal. Fucktards...

In that fucking order!

 

[LuminousAether]

The White EP is sometimes my favorite Agalloch release. It's so soothing. Wonderful. You can skip The Gray EP though. It's just two drone remixes, not my thing.

I would call Agalloch largely black metal. There's elements of neo folk and post rock, especially so on The Mantle. Wouldn't call them folk metal.

I would say I liked Agalloch before they were cool but they were hyped from day one.

 

[skeptik]

What? No. Agalloch has no doom metal in their sound, and dark metal is a mixture of doom and black metal.

You cockheaded, arrogant fool. To think that "dark metal" is a regimented, static genre descriptor is nothing short of idiotic.

Here are John Haughm's own words:

"I think we have made this quite clear over the years. At its core, Agalloch is a Dark Metal band. The full lengths will always stem from the Dark Metal foundation and will utilize some of the experimentation we focus on with the minor releases."

 

[LuminousAether]

But it is, it's a style that was based on the album Dark Metal from the band Bethlehem. Doesn't really matter what Haughm says, perhaps he just has a fundamental misunderstanding of what dark metal is.

 

[waif]

Pantera had an album called Power Metal. Clearly everyone else is just doing it wrong, right?

Naming genres isn't like discovering continents. You don't get to claim a new genre just because you were the first to think of it. Wintersun call themselves...I forget what. Something ridiculous. Doesn't matter, they're symphonic power metal. Deal with it.

Iirc Rotting Christ call themselves dark metal as well. I think it's a fairly vague term for metal bands that use harsh vocals but lack the aggression to fit into the extreme metal spectrum.

 

[skeptik]

But it is, it's a style that was based on the album Dark Metal from the band Bethlehem. Doesn't really matter what Haughm says, perhaps he just has a fundamental misunderstanding of what dark metal is.

Perhaps you have a fundamental misunderstanding of you not being an idiot who talks out of his ass. People who actually think that any genre, let alone a technically non-existent subgenre such as "dark metal", are these rigid, explicitly defined structures with no variation are incredibly obnoxious, and you are wonderful evidence in support of that. Agalloch's sound cannot be properly defined by any one, or even multiple, standard genre tags, but dark metal, when understood by somebody intelligent enough to realize that it's not "a mixture of doom and black metal" (which, by the way, is what we call "black doom metal"), and in fact doesn't have a proper definition, nor has clear boundaries, is as apt a term as any. It encompasses all of their core influences, from Ulver to Katatonia to Bethlehem and even Bathory. You can beat your head against the wall on this, but everybody else will realize that you don't know what the hell you're talking about.

 

[Vamos]

Doesn't really matter what Haughm says, perhaps he just has a fundamental misunderstanding of what dark metal is.

So, Haughm, who as far as I know is the main writer behind the band has no clue as to what type of music they play, but you do.

Right.