Agalloch Call It Quits

I really dig the Pillorian album. It isn't groundbreaking but I don't give a shit. It rocks my face off and at the end of the day that's what I want. During the beginning and middle of said day as well, I suppose.

I'm still trying to wrap my whatever around Khôrada. Part of me can't stand it. Another part of enjoys the adventure. I feel like maybe in 5 years I'll "get" it. Or it'll get permanently shelved like the one Giant Squid album I own.

I still listen to my least favoUrite Agalloch album over either one of them, but I'll follow all these dudes until I'm dead. Their collective created some of the most meaningful music ever, and I will gladly hand them $12 for each release.
 
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I really dig the Pillorian album. It isn't groundbreaking but I don't give a shit. It rocks my face off and at the end of the day that's what I want. During the beginning and middle of said day as well, I suppose.

I'm still trying to wrap my whatever around Khôrada. Part of me can't stand it. Another part of enjoys the adventure. I feel like maybe in 5 years I'll "get" it. Or it'll get permanently shelved like the one Giant Squid album I own.

I still listen to my least favoUrite Agalloch album over either one of them, but I'll follow all these dudes until I'm dead. Their collective created some of the most meaningful music ever, and I will gladly hand them $12 for each release.

Obsidian Arc is an awesome album, and I dont care what anyone else has to say about it. It's not magical or anything like that, but he songs are well-written, interesting, and the production is really incredible. It's too bad we won't be hearing another album from them (you guys DID hear about all of that FB drama right?), but at least they got to play like a hundred shows just from that 40 min of material hahaha. I actually drove to NYC to see them with WITTR. They started playing and sounded great, but after 15 minutes the input on John's baritone guitar stopped working and they just said "sorry" and walked off stage. Kind of lame but oh well. WITTR were very good.

I kind of feel the same way about Khorada. I want to love that record but I'm just not there. Musically its mostly excellent, but I can't get into the vocals at all. There are some passages where there's just too much weird fuckery going on, but they always seem to pull it together in the end. At least the box set is cool, because I paid a lot of money for it! Wonderful presentation and I fucking love the art prints. I mean, overall its a really good release. I think it took a while for them to put it out and the hype reached levels which no new band should have to navigate.

I'm with you though, anything these guys release is going to be in my collection. I have been listening to a lot of the J. Haughm solo/ambient/atmospheric stuff and it's pretty enjoyable. JWW put out a crazy album last year under the name Snares of Sixes. It's totally fucking off-the-wall bizarre but somehow extremely listenable. Highly recommended. His podcast "I Hate Music" is great.
 
but after 15 minutes the input on John's baritone guitar stopped working and they just said "sorry" and walked off stage.
this is why you should never leave home without a soldering iron
 
Agreed. Best band ever? Best band ever. The Serpent and the Sphere has been the only CD that never leaves my Jeep. Ever. It is the perfect soundtrack for the mountains.

Man I didn't know that about Pillorian, what a bummer. I've had a sticker of theirs since I bought the album and I still haven't placed it upon a bass/amp/fuzz/case/car yet because I feel like it's too good to waste in a split second decision. If I had a Khorada sticker it would've been slapped upon a pedalboard case, post haste! I'll enjoy that album some day. Maybe.

I fixed a dude's guitar on stage once. They were opening for my band at the time, some dudes from Italy on tour in the US. Their last date was that night in LA and all their shit was falling apart. Their drummer bargained with my drummer to borrow his double kick pedal, which was quite hilarious because watching an Italian dude debate with an half-autistic kid was like viewing a mentalist's version of WWF. Anyhow the singer's guitar fell off its strap in mid-song, the whole strap button gave out. He looked in the crowd in panic, found my gaze, and tossed it at me. I grabbed my repair kit and had it all back in place before the next verse. He winked at me in thanks. I never felt so cool working for free as I did in that moment.
 
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Man, you all like Pillorian way more than I did. Same with The Serpent and the Sphere . It's so damn tedious.
 
I think I'm the only person that loves the ol' Spherical Serpent. Why so much? lol idk
 
pillorian is inoffensive enough but it's in one ear, out the other

serpent and the sphere does offend me however.
 
Yup. The worst thing about Serpent is that the first three tracks sound pretty good, but then it takes a HARD dive. Somethings definitely wrong when a band which just released "Black Lake Niðstång" and "Faustian Echoes" starts phoning in a bunch of really basic and tired melodeth themes. While I do like "The Astral Dialogue" as a song on its own, it sounds like it was written by Amon Amarth. I don't know where they could have gone after this album, and it probably would have been similarly underwhelming.

edit: Despite all of this, I do own 3 different copies of the album
 
Terrible, terrible song title too. Fortunately since they threw the towel before soiling their legacy further I can forget this album happened

Hey Marksveldt Johnson, how is new Noltem coming along?

Hello! It's actually coming along very well. We have a week booked in a real, actual, professional studio during the week of July 15. Our engineer/mixing guy is Spenser Morris who has done a lot of work with Saor, Panopticon, Vukari, etc. It's going to be a live recording with the intention of making it sound less like three guys sharing files over the internet. To be honest, the "folk" element is largely absent from this release but it still the same band. We are sure to alienate some of the listeners of the earlier Noltem material, but I really don't care. Expect longer, faster, atmospheric, melodic, and sometimes "proggy" songs. I think we have still nailed the feeling of music which sounds like it was written in the 90's or early 2000's. That was something a lot of people said about "Mannaz" so it was important to keep intact. We have a new bass player and he's like a mix between Steve Digiorgio and Martin Hendriksson on "The Gallery". The layout is done, and hopefully we can get everything recorded during that week. I don't think we will be doing anything with NSP this time, so we will be on the search for a label. I am extremely fucking excited to show off the album. If you are being killed by curiosity, send me a PM and I can share a couple of the demos.
 
This is great news, by teasing you I did not expect things to be that advanced! Yes I'd love to bask in your proggy side.
Incidentally I now am contributing again to a pretty big French-speaking webzine, so I could throw you a bit of promotion there...