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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 ...

Immortal - At the Heart of Winter

Listen Here Y ou might notice that I'm trying out a new format for my posts, based on suggestions I received. Instead of putting the album art and link at the bottom of the review, I'm putting them at the top so you can easily look at the art and listen to the album while you read the review. I haven't decided if I like this new format yet, so I might change back in a few weeks, I don't know, we'll see. Anyway, lets get to the review. I mmortal is what I'd call an important band: they aren't necessarily the best, the founding, or even the most famous band of the genre, but they without a doubt had a lasting impact on it and music in general. Immortal is a Norwegian black metal band, which stands out due to their good recording quality, relatively accessible sound, and unusual melodies. Immortal's early albums were still in the style of traditional, second wave black metal, but At the Heart of Wi...

The Jesus Lizard - Goat

Since I just reviewed Big Black (see my review of Big Black - Atomizer here ), I thought it would be appropriate to review another highly influential noise rock band, The Jesus Lizard. The Jesus Lizard is strongly influenced by Big Black, especially because Steve Albini, the ex frontman of Big Black, is their recording engineer. I think "recording engineer" is a title Albini made up, but it's basically the same thing as a producer. According to him, the difference is recording engineers solve problems in capturing sound, while letting the artist have complete control; on the other hand producers will often take control and ruin records. The Jesus Lizard's music often features a mix of low rolling guitars and bass, harsh shrieking guitars, slow drums, and weird shouted muffled vocals. It's kind of hard to tell, but the cover of Goat is a naked woman with some image projected on her. To be honest, I'm ...

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