Review Summary: Agalloch emphasizes the warmth of love and nature, while also embracing the bitterness of winter and death with ambiance, folk infusions, soaring guitars, and Grade A lyricism.
Though it has been said many times, the best way to describe a record such as The Mantle is in that it is desolate and dreary - devoid of all hope, even. However, even though this is true in every sense of those words, I have always felt this record attempts to evoke a sense of respect and love for nature while also embracing the failings of the frailty of life and the human race both as wholes instead of being a lopsided project focused on an empty man's lonely musings.
The folk elements mostly serve as the backbone of the entire album, having an acoustic guitar on essentially every track and played in such a way it feels as if you are sitting around a campfire and being told this heart-wrenching story of the loss of one's own personal values; the instrumentation is often methodical and careful, with vocals ranging from tones that sound quite dead and emotionless to whispered growls and very brief lilts.
Despite how long some of the tracks are, Agalloch manages to make it feel as if the guitars simply meld into the atmosphere surrounding each song like waves crashing on the shore of a beach in such a satisfying, rewarding way. They take their time into setting up what feels like a blizzard preparing to wreak havoc through a snow-covered forest, which they are able to paint a picture of with the sounds of wind they incorporate and footsteps walking through the snow in the midst of a song finding its ground or at the end of ascending, soaring guitars and heaving drums which are as impactful as they are blissful.
Lyrically, the album does explore what it means to uphold personal love; in this record's case, it is both romantic love and the love of nature in the first half. There are verses where the singer whispers to how his spirit and core ideas will never be stolen from him or how God exists in nature, but in the second half in the record, it feels as if this mentality crumbles as the loss of a loved one drives him mad while also lamenting how humanity will bring about its own end in a very inventive way that is borrowed from Native American culture with the sky tumbling down upon the masses, proving to be symbolism that humans cannot last as long as they continue this behavior. The brooding vocals and somber acoustic guitar match this sort of symbolic storytelling quite perfectly.
While the guitar riffs and steady drums are tone-setters for much of the record due to how well they collide and merge with the ambiance presented, the folk elements come into play with not just the storytelling but also the instrumentals which do explore more stripped back sounds. The closing track even features a harmonica that harkens back to the feeling of every single line culminating in a story that an elder would tell you in front of the fireplace as if it's some sort of fairy tale itself.
