basic opinion:
* marrow of the spirit is a good album performed and recorded poorly
* serpent & the sphere is a bad album performed and recorded well
elaborations on these points:
MARROW OF THE SPIRIT
* at this point as i recall the band had this misguided idea that hey, we're a ROCK BAND, wouldn't it be nice if we recorded ALL ANALOG and a bit more LIVE like THE BEATLES. well but you're not the beatles, see. it's generally not very tight, the guitars are congested and muddy, the drum sounds are terrible (check out that fucking ride! 0:55 "the watcher's monolith" -- what the actual shit were they doing? it's like they accidentally muted the overheads during mixdown) and the mix is generally just bad. this is not what "analog warmth" or whatever sounds like, this is just poor mixing. i'm sorry.
* it would have been nice if they tuned and intonated their guitars before recording the album. (6:08 of "ghosts of the midwinter fires", holy shit. how do you let this slip through the cracks?)
* he seems like a decent guy and i actually feel bad for talking so much shit about his performance but aesop dekker's drumming on this album is some of the worst metal drumming i've heard, full stop. you can hear his arms gradually cooking into pasta al dente towards the end of "into the painted grey", it's actually cringeworthy. i feel bad when i listen to it and that really sours my enjoyment of the Art, ya know?
* i think the second half of "to drown" is one of the real highlights of the album and generally it's a bad sign i think when the highlights of a metal album are when they're not metalling.
* "black lake nidstång" is a bunch of overwrought bullshit for the most part. actually the album as a whole is heavy on the overwrought bullshit. it's like they've forgotten that when they were at their strongest, they actually had super-tight songwriting. on "pale folklore" there's interesting, well-crafted stuff going on all the time, now there's too much noodling about and random post-rock sections on untuned guitars. i just don't know.
* i think the album in general has a feeling of giving up on part of the creative and evolutionary process and just committing to like "hey we're agalloch so let's do agalloch things", yes ghosts of the midwinter fires recalls bits and pieces of pale folklore and the mantle but it just doesn't work for me. it's like they're just doing what is expected of them.
* all this means that i can't really listen to this album without being constantly aware of all the technical defects. i think it actually ruins the album for me. i feel like it really makes me unable to immerse myself into the world they're trying to create. it's a sad thing too because the second half of "into the painted grey" rips and is one of the band's more inspired post-mantle pieces.
SERPENT & THE SPHERE
* i have almost no technical complaints this time. it sounds good. aesop is still the most boring drummer this side of a roland tr-808 but at least he's tighter and has a less annoying drum sound this time. this time it's a digital protools/etc recording so they could edit his performances i guess. actually at least one of the edits is pretty ugly and audible, check out the cymbals at 4:42 in "the astral dialogue". yep i just ruined it for you, now you will not be able to unhear that
* the acoustic pieces are lovely, evocative and beautiful but they are musk ox, not agalloch. you know how i said that it's a bad sign when the best parts of a metal album are the non-metal bits? yeah...
* they were trying to switch it up by singing about space instead of oaken citadels and that's cool i guess. i also feel like there are conscious efforts to go into some less obvious chord progressions and twists and turns into the songs and i appreciate that. i guess they recognized that they had fallen into a bit of an "agalloch sounds like agalloch" rut. and their classic sound is very restrictive so i realize it must have been pretty tough to evolve within those parameters. it's not a bad direction they were trying to go in, i just think the execution is a bit uninspired.
* "birth and death of the pillars of creation" starts off so cool and makes you feel like you're really in for a ride but ends up basically nowhere after the big supposed climax. no idea what the lead guitar bits at the end are supposed to accomplish but i sure as shit ain't feeling it.
* "the astral dialogue" ain't bad for what it is, it at least has some drive and fire to it, but it's just mystifying why they would suddenly feel like sounding like IN THY DREAMS or [second rate melodeath band from 1996] was a good idea. honestly i feel like it's probably the best song on the album and it doesn't even really sound like agalloch.
* "dark matter gods" is not great.
* "celestial effigy" is cool. i do like the blend of classic agalloch stylings with some less expected twists. i mean if the rest of the album upheld this kind of quality...
* "vales beyond dimension" is not great.
* "plateau of the ages" is the worst thing they ever wrote, just blehhhh. feels 100% like some improvised filler they came up with in the studio to make the album longer.
FINAL CONCLUSION:
i almost feel bad for roasting these albums so hard but it's because i loved agalloch so much and feel strongly that they could have been so much better than how they ended up.
"serpent" is not as bad as i remember, but "marrow" is not as good as i remember.
i still think "marrow" wins but it's actually by much less than i thought it would be. it has really not aged gracefully. i appreciate the chance to reevaluate these albums. now to return them to their sleep in dark woods of time. will probably not touch them again for a long ass time.
