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Agalloch - The Mantle

"A celebration for the death of man..." "...and the great cold death of the Earth" The names of the first and eighth tracks come together to create a perfect description for the mood of this album: It's harrowing, it's dreary, it's the soundtrack to the world slowly dying. The Mantle is the second studio album by the American blackened post metal band, Agalloch. If you want to know what blackened post metal sounds like, imagine black metal, way slowed down, and with some doomer guitars thrown in. Agalloch is especially good at throwing doomer guitars, and as a result has created some of the best music in the genre. The band created five great albums, but their pièce de résistance is The Mantle. The songs on The Mantle sound desolate and mournful in a way that feels almost terrifyingly relatable. Chilling song titles such as "A celebration for the death of man...", "In the Shadow of our Pale Companion", "You Were but a Ghost in ...

Behemoth - Demigod

Behemoth is one of my favorite extreme metal bands. I would classify them as blackened death metal, although they are more death than black, at least in their more later albums. Their lyrics have satanic and occult themes, which are common in these styles of music, but also often have deeper, more thought provoking lyrics. Behemoth's early albums, such as Seventh (Storming Near the Baltic) and Grom had a much more traditional black metal sound reminiscent of early Mayhem and Emperor. This changed in 1999 when Behemoth released Satanica , which featured a slightly more accessible blackened death metal sound, which personally, I liked better. This sound further developed until Behemoth released one of their best albums, Demigod , in 2004. Behemoth's sound now distinguished its self with impressive guttural vocals and surprisingly good guitar harmonies and riffs which work well with the rest of the song. The two albums following Demigod weren't quite as good, but Behemoth...

Opeth - Blackwater Park

The last few bands I've reviewed were somewhat obscure, but the next album I picked, "Blackwater Park" is by a famous progressive death metal band, Opeth. Progressive or prog metal is a very hard genre to define since it describes a certain sound that the music has. Prog is often marked by complicated riffs and solos, sudden changes in the melody, and weird, often changing timings and rhythms that give the listener a feeling like they are falling into the music, but I'd really recommend just listening to some prog, because this description doesn't quite do the genre justice. One thing I really like is when a band picks a cover for an album that gives you a good idea what the music is going to sound like, and this album does just that. The picture appears to be of a dark foggy swamp with what appears to be human forms in the background, obscured by the fog. The album cover looks dark and gloomy, and t...

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