Ashes Against the Grain

For my first review, I had to choose something that was both emotional and heavy. Something that was filled with anger, and also sorrow. From it's ambient tracks to its raw black/post metal tracks, Ashes Against the Grain, by Agalloch its that idea incarnate.
I hear alot of people who always go on how they don't like when the vocalist (fuck looking up names, like you would know who I was talking about without googling it anyway) does his clean vocals. They can get kind of tedious, but in Fire Above, Ice Below, I think they are a perfect company to the slow intro that song performs. As soon as whats-his-nuts-vocalist changes tune, however with the lyric; "There has never been a silence like this before" the songs fucking moment of calm is broken, and you know what the fuck is up. (Even if that lyric only introduces you to the acoustic portion of the song. It all builds up to the heavy ear-ection of the song.)
Back to the album as a whole though. The track This White Mountain On Which You Will Die, is a two minute ambient track that I personally think brings the entire first half of the album together (first half meaning before the three Our Fortress Is Burning songs). The black metal influences on this post metal album are so perfectly handled that you expect two minutes of ambience, but Agalloch throws you off guard by putting them right after Falling Snow, another song of beauty, but not exactly the slowest song. The first half of the album is pretty much a giant build up you don't realise is a giant build up until you've listened to the album close to a hundred times and you have to write a review on it.
Obviously, the build up is all for the second half, the song Our Fortress is Burning, separated into three tracks; the first one being instrumental, the second, Bloodbirds, is a seven minute piece of art about the existence of God, and also about his failure. The third part, The Grain, is also instrumental. My only beef of this seven minute ambient song is that it's seven minutes of white noise. Sure, I bet that's totally rad if that's the end of the album, but I have the limited edition bonus track Scars of the Shattered Sky (Our Fortress Has Burned to the Ground). I get so pumped listening to the first half build up, the first two parts of Our Fortress is Burning, then I come down off my high, put my shirt back on and listen to seven minutes of white noise to fully erase all particles of this drug from my system. Then I'm thrown back in for TWENTY MINUTES of a really good song, whose cool down period is alot shorter than The Grain.
My last and final point is also of the negativity. The lyrics, which I find extremely important in music, are extremely disappointing. Agalloch, you can't release an album with lyrics as beautiful as The Mantle, and then get away with sub par lyrics like "Sky fire above, ice below the hearth; Fall away from me to that citadel at the end of time". You just aren't allowed to. It's a technical foul.

All in all, great album, lacking in some departments, lyrics and The Grain, mostly. 8/10, but who's counting.

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