Agalloch: The Serpent & the Sphere (2014)

Yesterday's post was on a Portland, Oregon band called Bewitcher in which I discussed how much of a metal hotbed the Northwestern city has become.  When one thinks of metal from Portland, Oregon though, mostly the first band to come to mind would be Agalloch.  The band has become the quintessential band that has come to define the scene and the so-called "Cascadian" black metal sound in particular.

It has only really been recently that I have gotten into Agalloch.  For a long time I kind of avoided them due to their being lumped in with groups like Neurosis and Isis and their post-metal leanings.  It did not help that the band was often embraced by the more hipster-leaning metal crowd.  And so, it took some time before I got around to checking out the band.  I am sorry it took so long.

There are a lot of post-metal moments, moments where the aggression drains from the music and what is left is some melodic guitar noodling and not much else.  But these are often juxtaposed against much heavier sections, and in moments like "Celestial Effigy", even though the post-metal noodling is the primary part of the song, the band keeps things ever interesting by combining it with blackened growled vocals.  Tracks like "The Astral Dialogue" are as close to the band's black metal foundation as it gets, but even that one is not immune from some post-metal musings.  Much of the album is somber and there is a heavy doom metal influence.  The various sound textures explored by the band come off as beautiful, yet hostile, a sound that reflects nature itself, something the band has sought to do from the very beginning.

The album seems to be a concept piece, which would not be unusual for Agalloch.  Sort of a universal creation centered around the idea of a great serpent eating its own tail: where something ends, something begins.  And the album itself follows suit with the final track "(Serpens Cauda)" leading back into the opening track when the album is played over again. 

This is Agalloch's final album and they went out on a high note.  It takes a few listens to begin to understand and it is certainly not as immediate as say, the album from yesterday.  There are a lot of layers to the album's sound and repeated listens inevitably lead to more discoveries.  That being said, it is an incredibly thought-out and dense release that wraps up the band's career remarkably well.