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Members' Top Ten and at number six we find
The Mantle --- Agalloch --- 2002
I always assumed Agalloch was the name of some demon from the darkest hells, but turns out it's actually the genus of a particular wood. Hardly heavy metal now is it? More like heavy wood! Oh well, enough jokes (whaddya mean, what jokes?) --- let's have a listen to this, their second album. Ooh! Acoustic guitar! Well this is a nice change after the muddy nothingness and despair of Incantation. Instrumental, which carries on into the first vocal track, itself fourteen minutes long. A great relief to hear that, after some hoarse death vocals, there are clean ones taking over. The song is just brilliant, never seems to flag and before I even know it we're eleven minutes in. Even the harsher vocals have a kind of sibilant whispering quality that, while dark and unsettling, is easily understandable. Next track is also great, seems to be an instrumental. No complaints about this album so far.
Gets rocking again with “I am the wooden doors”, then “The Lodge” features some sound effects including what sounds like boots walking in the snow, followed by a really nice slow acoustic guitar, yet another great instrumental and into one of the longer tracks, with “You were but a ghost in my arms” clocking in at over nine minutes, though the next one is two minutes longer. This is another fantastic instrumental, which just continues to demonstrate the versatility and talent of this band. A lovely acoustic with a chanting vocal lament for “... And the great cold death of the Earth”. There has not been one single bad track on this album yet, nor will there I feel be. No, there weren't. Ten out of ten for this album.
His number five then is from a band I have heard once, who actually appeared in I think Mondo Bungle's top ten last year, though this of course is a different album.
Through Silver in Blood --- Neurosis --- 1996
Some long tracks on here again, though in total we're only looking at nine tracks. Interesting guitar motif on the first track, with the vocals kind of shouted but very intelligible. For a twelve-minute track that was not bad at all. In contrast, “Rehumanize” is less than two minutes and, well, terrible, mostly just speech. “Purify” is another twelve-minuter. Bit of a roared vocal but it goes in quicker than expected, so it can't be that bad. Certainly some very good guitar work in it. Also sounds like bagpipes, oddly enough, which contrast with the guitar just enough to be interesting without being dissonant. “Strength of fates” is nearly ten minutes but very restrained, very slow and almost funereal in its pace, though it does get a lot more intense and loud in the last two minutes.
A short minute-and-a-half kind of interlude and then the album closes on two epics, the first, “Aeon”, almost thirteen minutes long, starts quietly but then ramps up with an angry vocal and tough guitar. Really gets going with a great powerful guitar and keyboard motif that lasts up to about the ninth minute, then fades away to mostly just percussion, then a beautiful cello melody takes it into the final section. “Enclosure in flame” rides on a soft, hypnotic, repeating piano and guitar line, before the ambience is shattered by a wracked, wounded howl which continues mostly through the rest of the song, and then it fades out as it begun.
All in all, not a bad album though it's not really something I'd be tending to go back to, unlike the Agalloch one.
Number four gives us another band I've heard before:
Autumn Aurora --- Drudkh --- 2004
To date, I've heard two albums from this Ukrainean black metal band and I've loved both. This is their second album, and opens on a short acoustic song with a very pastoral feel, including the sound of birdsong before “Summoning the rain” ups the ante with hard electric guitar and trundles along in that somehow folk metal vein that Drudkh seem to explore so well and meld with their own black metal influences. “Glare of autumn” returns us to those golden fields, with acoustic guitar and the reappearance of birdsong, together this time with the sound of babbling streams, then electric guitar punches through but does not ruin the ambience.
The last three tracks all exceed nine minutes, but I'm not worried. I've yet to hear a Drudkh song I did not love. “Sunwheel” is visceral but really great, and again seems to have bagpipes in the melody. “Wind of the night forests” is a driving pagan anthem that sets the blood pumping, and the album closes on “The first snow”, with a very atmospheric feel to it, some really nice keyboard work adding to the overall flavour of the song. Seems to be an instrumental, which is a perfect way to close the album, bookending it with the opener.
Another perfect album from this Ukrainean band who never fail to impress and so far, have never even come close to disappointing me.