Northern Atmospheric metal? Cool stuff - Hawthorne Passage is a great, great song. Really a sit back a chill kinda album. Does give the feel of walking through the winter woods or something. These guys are obviously enormously talented. Hard to pick favorites except Hawthorne Passage which rocks.
Way, way, way better than I anticipated. - I read all of these positive reviews about this album, and I decided to buy this CD. I was expecting it to be good, but as it turns out, it s amazing. Words to describe the music...beautifull, romantic, down tempo, dark, honest, magical, unique, and certainly creative. As far as the doom metal genre is conscerned, Agalloch is one of the best. For fans of ULVER, and MY DYING BRIDE.
Beautiful - A Celebration For The Death Of Man is the greatest and saddest songs I have ever heard in my life. And I m 38 and have 40000 MP3s on my conputer and listened to them all.The most amazing and underrated bands of all time. I loved it so much, I bought several copies AFTER I d pirated it.
Musical magic - It s all about atmosphere Peloser. This band creates it and the listener is captured by the haunting melodies with acoustic and hard passages. This band is something to watch for in the future. Bands like this keep my faith in the creative spirit. Thank goodness there are still bands that put forth great music like this. Ashes against the grain is slightly better than this but this is still worth the purchase.
My new favorite album. - I didn t know what to expect from Agalloch. I d read a lot of positive reviews of them, and the way people explained them made me think they were similar to Opeth. I took an interest in the band, listened to some samples, figured they were worth downloading...I was stunned. I have never heard any band like this before. Agalloch takes the strange, almost unheard-of time signatures of Opeth s first 2 albums, and integrades them with cold, dreary, atmospheric soundscapes as well as folk music. Listening to The Mantle really makes me feel like I m in a forest covered with snow... just walking, feeling neither peace nor uncomfort. But enough of my pseudo intellectual rambling. The Mantle has some really amazing songs like In The Shadow of Our Pale Comparison, The Hawthorne Passage (one of THE best instrumentals I ve ever heard), and my personal favorite, ..And The Great Cold Death of The Earth. The Mantle has this very relxed, melancholy atmosphere to it which is really hard to explain. True, Singer/guitarist John Haughm uses black metal vocals, but they sound hushes. They don t sound overwhelming or angry. They mix into the music perfectly, and don t drown it out. The clean vocals are also amazing as well. None of it is overwhelming, really. Very dark, cold, and very atmospheric, which is my favorite part of Agalloch s music.The majority of the songs are quite long, but Agalloch s ability to keep the same mellow atmosphere throughout each song without wearing it out is compelling. It adds to the experience of The Mantle. Even the 11-minute instrumental, The Hawthorne Passage, never gets hold, but only enriches the experience. The lyrics have a lot to do with nature, as well as finding inner peace, and tragedy. They work extremely well to mix with the album s sound, and none of them sound cheesy.As for the Opeth comparisons.. While I do agree that there is a big difference between Agalloch and Opeth, I can see similaritiest between Agalloch and Opeth s first 2 albums. Not so much the sound as much as the style of the music and the atmosphere. But comparing them to post Morningrise Opeth does them no justice. And while Opeth get agressive in their songs, Agalloch stays mellow all the time. I loved this album so much that I didn t waste any time not downloading their other albums. Each one, while retaining the melancholy sound that The Mantle does, is different and creative in its own way, but The Mantle still reigns supreme in my book. This is my favorite album right now, and if you give it a chance, it just might become yours, too.