MARROW OF THE SPIRIT

Another modern masterpiece put out by the now defunct (and much mourned) Agalloch. If you would have told me 10 years ago (when I was spinning anything sporting Neal Morse or otherwise donning the label of symphonic progressive rock) that my favorite band in 10 years would be a growling, foreboding death metal band, I would have had serious questions about what in the world must have happened to my life in between. But Agalloch quickly became one of my overall favorite modern bands in light of their raw but keenly sophisticated blend of metal, harmony, and space, and Marrow of the Spirit is an excellent example of Agalloch at its finest. Here, you have crushing guitars, thundering double bass, but also an almost shoegazer quality of atmosphere and space. The buildups are intense, emotional, and cathartic, and the extended instrumental passages are refreshing, spacey, and lend greater weight and significance to the thrashing guitars and raspy growls that are to come. If The Mantle is a contemplative walk through a wooded deathland, Marrow of the Spirit is a tormented trek through a haunted forest. At once frenzied and tortured, at other times beautiful and awe-inspiring, Marrow of the Spirit exemplifies the brutality and beauty of man's relationship with nature and of the band that captured that essence better than any I've known.