Winter is upon us once more, and the world has taken on a grim blankness that chills the soul and tires the spirit. Agalloch's latest release, Marrow of the Spirit, is a fitting album for these bleak and dreary times. Continuing the black folk metal style of their preceding 3 albums, Marrow captures the sleepy, dreamlike quiet of winter.
The album opener, They Escaped The Weight Of Darkness, is a forlorn, sombre folk instrumental. A lone cello over a backdrop of rippling water and birdsong laments the onset of winter. A slow and saddening start to the album but one that captures the mood of the piece.
The segue to the next track, Into The Painted Grey, is a thundering drum intro with an intricately detailed black metal guitar riff. The song seems to be about the lost majesty of an extinct volcano; once a Pagan god of power and fire, now sleeping in an icey shroud of cloud and snow. The quiet rasping of the vocal over the ever-building melody and thundering drum has a soporific, yet disquieting quality.
The album continues in this vein, drawing on Pagan mythology for it's imagery, yet maintaining the overarching theme of decay, loneliness and a forgotten past. From runic monoliths, cursing sticks (or Nidstång) and ghosts in the fires burning in the mid-winter night. The album is rich with images of life and light being torn down by the heavy, unbearable weight of the physical and metaphorical winter.
The folk melody and darker riffs combine to capture the listener and to impress the gravity of the songwriting on them. All tracks were recorded on vintage analogue equipment which adds to the soft, earthy feel of the instruments and the results are an album that is very easy to listen to, or to simply put on and allow to wash over you.
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