Review by SilentScream213 for Agalloch - The Mantle (2002)

I was quite blown away by Agalloch’s debut album. Despite the music being relatively simple, they were already masters at crafting melancholic guitar leads and somber chord progressions that evoked a dark, emotional atmosphere. The songs were so memorable they sounded like a band that had long since mastered their craft rather than a debut. I had high hopes for their next album.

The Mantle is usually regarded as not only the band’s best, but one of the greatest Metal albums of all time, particularly standing as a monolith of Post-Metal. However, the first thing that stands out about this album is that not only is there a lot less extreme Metal (Black Metal influences here are relegated to secondary) but there’s also just a lot less Metal in general. There is so much Folk (primarily Neofolk and Dark folk) that it competes with Post-Metal as the primary genre for the album.

Thanks to this folkiness, the album is exceptionally pagan and nature-oriented, the whole journey feeling like a lonely camping expedition in the dense Cascadian forest mountains of North America. Constantly stumbling upon native burial grounds and bygone mythology while trying to escape the thoughts and feelings of the girl who just left you. This is all captured in spades, and the shift in sound from their debut creates a far more unique experience that even today remains an enigma.

The songwriting for the most part weaves acoustic passages both between and within the Metal tracks, layering guitars atop one another as they build towards crescendos. Many simple but effective guitar melodies will slowly change and build upon each other in a slightly droning fashion, resulting in a smooth ascension towards harmonic peaks. There ARE still extreme Metal sections left, and such passages with black shrieks and pounding double bass drums provide much needed energy and aggression to the otherwise passive music.

Now for all its praise, I must say, the album was a slight disappointment and step down from the debut for me. Some of the acoustic oriented tracks just sounded a bit too generic – like your average campfire dude with a guitar playing the 6 chords he knows. There is a lot of instrumental stuff here, and while some of it is exceptional (Odal, the second half of The Hawthorne Passage), other tracks just feel a bit pointless (A Celebration for the Death of Man, The Lodge) like they don’t have a strong enough idea to make them their own song, and would have been better worked into a longer track rather than standing on their own. The lyrics and vocals are quite enjoyable for me, so the final track A Desolation Song is quite good thanks to the personal, introspective lyricism despite the exceedingly simple music; the aforementioned instrumental tracks are sorely lacking because they don’t have any poetic lyrics to make up for their uneventful songwriting.

Another thing I will say – the shift away from extreme Metal towards Folk, and much of this album being clean and acoustic, makes it FAR more accessible. I have to wonder if the only reason it’s considered such a masterpiece is because it can be enjoyed by far more people than a Black Metal album can.

Let there be no mistake though; this is a FANTASTIC album. The ONLY reason I have some harsh words for it is because I am coming off of their incredible debut, and had my expectations set to the sky. If I had heard this one first, I think it would have blown me away in a totally different way. Incredibly unique experience in the Metal spectrum. I recommend this one for a nature hike in winter.