I lived in Portland, Ore., for six months in 1997: It didn't stop raining, until, eventually, the rain just turned into snow. Coffee shop regulars told me it was an especially bad winter for the Pacific Northwest, but even amid the sleet breezes, I made plenty of treks to Mt. Tabor. When the weather was good, I jumped fences to pick fruit. If you were lucky enough to find a car, you could make a quick jump to the coast. Of all the cities I've temporarily called home, Portland coexisted best with the land it was built upon: Trees didn't feel like decorative afterthoughts.
Named for the fragrant, incense-burnt Agarwood, dark-metal quartet Agalloch are the perfect Portland band. Beginning as an idea in Montana sometime in late 1995/early 1996, founding members John Haughm and Jason Walton relocated to Oregon in 1996, where they met guitarist Don Anderson. Currently a quintet with drummer, Chris Greene, Agalloch's functioned as a proper group since releasing the 1997 demo, From Which of this Oak. The band's third album, Ashes Against the Grain, the first full-length since 2002's The Mantle and sundry EPs, is their hugest, most artful collection to date. It features an endless amount of hooks-- songs appear to be going out to sea when things pause and change direction, ushering in another lap. If you think this stuff's boring, you aren't listening.
Ten-minute opener "Limbs" floats Godspeed striations atop an Isis crunch. Gaining momentum, the swirl eventually moves toward an acoustic interlude, which offers a breath-catcher before the next spiral of echoing water-logged guitar and distorted drums. Floodgates open, close again, reopen. Lyrically, the "limbs" of the title refer to both human arms/legs ("Hacked, severed and forgotten") and branches/roots: "Earth to flesh, flesh to wood, cast these limbs into the water." Time gets cast, "Whispering from tree to tree/ Through every lonely bough it sings."
Speaking of words, Agalloch might lose a few less hardy souls when vocalist John Haughm enters the mix: Instead of Slint speak/sing, buried shoegazer wails, or the by now acceptable doomy Ocean scowl, Haughm's gruff, slick, snarled black metal-style voice seethes above the sound. Once he clears his throat, everything else becomes a backdrop to his dry-rot laryngitis: "The texture of the soul is a liquid/ That casts a vermillion flood/ From a wound carved as an oath/ It fills the river bank, a sanguine fog." (Unless you have a degree in black metal, good luck getting that without a lyric sheet.)
But then, to my ears at least, where groups like Godspeed and Mogwai function merely as background music to my daily occurrences, Agalloch consistently engages and overrides. Some name-check arboreal, less urban Swans-- especially when Jarboe stopped by the garden-- but Michael Gira was never about riffs like this. Comparisons to Opeth can and will also be penned. They work to some degree, but Agalloch add a shoegaze element to their intricate compositions: Unlike Ghost Reveries, the pieces don't feel as stitched together, and songs are long only if you pay attention to the display on your stereo. Keep your eyes closed and the anthemic "Limbs" could be divided into four pieces of occasionally proggy, neo-folk doom.
Same with "Falling Snow", which locates a catchy 1990s alterna-wavelength, as sludge guitars nestle behind psychedelic licks. The expressive, poppy notes make for a wonderful contrast between Haughm's cackled naturalistic lyrics: "Red birds escape from my wounds and return as falling snow/ To sweep the landscape/ A wind haunted; wings without bodies."
Yup, the first two tracks require fist pumping, but Agalloch are much more than dog-and-pony rockers. "This White Mountain on Which You Will Die", a minute-and-a-half of sleepy, somber ambience, is a swath of Gregorian chant minus the chanting. A quintessential embodiment of that 1997 Oregon chill, the 10-plus minute "Fire Above, Ice Below" places watery guitar over acoustic strums. As it grows, the whispery vocals contrast with the more mannered folk-metal sound. The end of "Fire Above, Ice Below" sinks and recedes, blending into the AM static-ocean of the next track, "Not Unlike the Waves". It builds from that midst to major guitar-chug riffs, balancing a heaviness and a fragile sort of beauty. Like the forms made when a stone's dropped in a pond, the layers keep coming. For instance, acoustic interludes often signal things are about to grow exponentially magisterial: Multi-track vocal drone; a Malefic-mixed dry rot howl (lyrically, "the midnight wolves who watch over the dawn" makes perfect sense); submerged double bass drum. It's a Medieval doom madrigal built on a sea bed fault-line.
As if none of this was huge enough, the album closes with the grandiose three-part "Our Fortress Is Burning". The crux? Overall ambient submersion. The opening section moves from piano to strumming-n-drumming against falling stars and fuzz bath; a drum roll links it to the second part, and the track ends where Agalloch often does-- in melancholic triumph. The finale, subtitled "The Grain", is the one time the record lags a tad: It's pretty, but it lacks the propulsivity of what came before it. Agalloch squeeze enough "epic" into each "endless horizon of ice" that appending a self-consciously three-part finale could be taken as superfluous.
I've used the word "metal" a few times, but don't let that scare you off. I'd offer more qualifiers and nifty neologisms, but that seems equally tired. No matter what you call it, Ashes finds Agalloch burning down the forest, replanting it, watching shit re-grow. In the process of that intense musical exploration they've become an intriguing band, regardless of genre designation.
