Salt

I think it's safe to say Don and the boys won Agalloch's messy divorce. Agalloch have long been one of my bands, and The Mantle is an album that meant the world to me in my teen years. With Pillorian, self-proclaimed Agalloch "visionary" John Haughm went on to prove that while he steered the ship in terms of aesthetics, the magic wasn't possible without the other members. Instead of trying to make Agalloch 2 like John, the remaining 75% of Agalloch went in the complete opposite direction. Besides some of Don's lead guitar, Khôrada sounds fucking nothing like Agalloch. From the start Khôrada seemed like a band that was too good to be true. Giant Squid's The Ichthyologist was another album that was massively important to me during formative years and still remains one of my favourites. Giant Squid split (or called an indefinite hiatus, rather) because being in the same band as parents was proving to be a logistical nightmare for Aaron and Jackie. When I heard that Aaron would be fronting a band composed of the non-"visionary" members of Agalloch I could hardly believe it. This was truly a fantasy football moment come true for me.

When the first preview song "Ossify" dropped, I admit I felt a bit confused. For whatever idiotic reason in my head Khôrada was going o be a mix of The Mantle and The Ichthyologist - my two favourite albums from the group's two predecessors. What played out instead was a synth-heavy 11 minute prog tinged odyssey that unashamedly flirted with pop elements. It reminded me of Don's oddball prog death metal band Sculptured more than anything. The song ended up indeed coming from Sculptured's cutting room floor and not being indicative of Salt as a whole. It also ended up growing to be one of my favourites, with its focused narrative songwriting being a strong win. The next preview song Glacial Gold confused me even more, essentially sounding like Giant Squid - complete with Jackie on cello and all! The final preview song "Seasons of Salt" was even more of a mindfuck. It starts with some weird Evoken funeral doom shit, quickly shifts gears to blast beats and never really lets up with the disregard for stylistic cohesion. But through musical skill, songwriting chops and probably a bit of luck, it somehow works. However, I was still skeptical that the album would make sense as a whole.

While it does frequently spread its stylistic tentacles, Salt ends up being a cohesive statement. Grounded in a vision of humanity collapsing under its own weight propped up by a weird atmospheric - but thankfully still riffy - amalgamation of prog and sludge, Salt is one hell of a trip. Songs like "Edeste", "Glacial Gold" and "Wave State" sound like they could have been originally slated for the next Giant Squid album. What really sets this apart is Don's leads. "Glacial Gold" is just about as Giant Squid as you can get but there's fucking melodic classic metal guitar verging on shred all over it. This should be a case of Don overplaying and marring an otherwise wonderful song but somehow it just ends making it better. While the chemistry was clearly fading between Don and John in The Serpent and the Sphere, Don and Aaron's disparate guitar styles work wonderfully together. "Wave State" feels most indicative of the overall album and is possibly its finest moment. First of all, who the hell ever thought trumpet could be used to such epic effect in a metal song? The whole song is drenched in the exotic Mediterranean atmosphere that has spawned some of Squid's finest moments. Don's Floydian touches are just the icing on the cake. The lyrics telling of humanity taking to the ocean once they have ruined the earth is very representative of Salt's lyricism as a whole and the simultaneously otherworldly and devastating nature of the music dovetails with the lyrics perfectly.

One of the most exciting things about Salt is you can tell it won't even be Khôrada's best album. While overall a massive success, there are a few chinks in their exoskeleton. "Seasons of Salt" is already better than it has any right to be, but there are some points where the stylistic shifts happen too abruptly. Despite some questionable backup vocals the short ballad "Augustus" works as a naked expression of grief à la Mount Eerie, but I am kind of on the fence about how it works with the overall flow of the album. "Water Rights" is by far my biggest gripe. It's still a fairly cool song - how could it not be with the amazing Killing Joke style bass and drum buildup? However, it's easily the weakest song on the album. It has this fucking crushing Neurosis part with Aaron bringing out these massive sludge barks, but then it abruptly switches to this uppity keyboard-driven thing that sounds kind of silly by comparison. While it does return and I do appreciate how stylistically fluid they are it would have been so fucking crushing and cathartic for them to just ride that for the entire second half of the song. For that matter the whole album could do with more harsh vocals, a lot of the sludgier parts are practically begging for them. Lyrically "Water Rights" is the biggest problem as well. Aaron is a great lyricist and is quite deft at couching very human matters in imagery and metaphor (the best example I can think of is Giant Squid's "Neonate" being about sharks and shit on the surface, but really being about his relationship with his father). While much of the lyrics is spawned from anxiety of raising kids in a world where climate change is poised to have devastating repercussions for humanity and Donald Trump is president. However, a lot of this is turned into an immersive story of civilization as we know it collapsing and then humanity in the distant future digging up the plastic remnants of our existence. "Water Rights" being about such a specific political issue so topical to when it was written detracts from this overall experience. While the rest of the lyrics are timeless, this could easily come off as dated a few decades hence.

I don't want to come off too harsh on a fantastic album and I'm only nitpicking so hard because I'm such a ridiculous fan of the musicians involved. Let's get back to the good shit. This wildly ambitious vision could have never worked without such great musicians at the helm. While he's not as much as a technical player as Don, Aaron's style is incredibly unique and is something I find myself picking up on all the time when I jam on guitar. He brings the sludge of Neurosis with the exotic intrigue of bands like Grails and Cul De Sac while adding proggy touches without self-consciously trying to sound prog. It's pretty fucking out there but it's a match made in heaven for me. Don's playing here doesn't necessarily sound like Agalloch, but you can tell it's Don and it really becomes apparent who was trying to experiment in Agallloch. There are a few moments that are quite reminiscent of Agalloch songs though and it and it is pretty cool to discover stuff like hey that atmospheric guitar line in "Seasons of Salt" is totally reminiscent of this part in "Black Lake Nidstång". He does get a bit shreddy at times and it probably shouldn't work with Salt's overall aesthetic but it just does. I can't even really explain why it does but I guess that's just the magic of having two guitar players who really click even if they're coming from really different places. Aesop Dekker is in seemingly 50 different bands and all of them are massively better off for having him. He can make blast beats sound killer in bands you wouldn't expect to have them, he plays with space really well and I'm really impressed at his ability to conjure up a sense of swing. Jason is a hell of a bassist and lays down a mammoth backbone for this album (and just as an aside: check out his music podcast I Hate Music, it's gotten me through many tedious workdays). Aaron's vocals are easily the most divisive part of Khôrada and I totally get why they aren't for everyone. His half-singing half-bellowing is pretty out there and can get nasally at times. Sometimes he's a bit flat. But I dunno, they've always gelled with me and totally worked with the bands he's fronted. I think there's a lot of beauty in flaw and The Ichthyologist or Salt wouldn't have been half as good with someone more technically adept but with less personality.

Salt was a big risk for the newly formed Khôrada but goddamn did it ever pay off. While not quite as towering as the greatest achievements of Agalloch and Giant Squid, its totally stands up to the legacies of the two killer bands that spawned it. While it's sad we'll never see Agalloch bounce back from a lackluster swan song and who knows when we'll get another Squid album, Khôrada is a fucking fantastic consolation prize. While it's more Squid than Agalloch, unlike Pillorian Salt manages to shake the weight of expectation and become firmly its own entity. Despite a little hiccup here and there, Khôrada have come out of the gate swinging and it's hard not to get the feeling that its only going to get better from here. Salt unapologetically comes out of left field (just look at the fucking album art!) but they have the skill to bring it all together and we're left with one of the most interesting slabs of off-kilter metal in a while.

After the highly publicized dissolution of Agalloch, one of this generation’s most important band, we were promised two different projects by its members. Pillorian was formed by the “leader” John Haughm who received a lot of flack for the way Agalloch ended and the three other members (Don Anderson, Jason William Walton and Aesop Dekker) decided to join forced with Aaron John Gregory from California’s Giant Squid, recently put on hold

I’m not gonna do a review within a review but it’s hard to talk about this album without talking about Pillorian too. I was far from thrilled with the new project from Haughm and the way he pushed his fellow band members under the bus definitely left a sour taste in my mouth. Pillorian’s Obsidian Arc felt like an unfinished continuation of Agalloch’s black metal identity. While competent, it didn’t impress me and I thought originality was lacking. While the album was released, I had high hopes when Gregory was announced to be a part of the second band as Giant Squid’s Minoans was one of my favorite albums of 2014. My hope wasn’t misplaced as this a grand and epic album.

We’re served seven elaborated pieces of music all furnished with elaborate rhythms and time signatures while remaining fairly melodic and atmospheric. The influences of Sculptured (Don Anderson’ band who’s been quiet since 2008) and Giant Squid are fairly present but it’s its own thing. Their style is fairly hard to categorize (which frankly can often be an inane thing to do) as they mix a lot of different styles into one really solid amalgam. While heavy enough to be seen or considered as metal, there’s a smooth feel throughout the whole record. Dekker’s intense and uncompromising drumming casts light where darkness is present and the guitars of Anderson and Gregory have never felt so vibrantly intelligent. From quasi funeral doom to blackened elegance, songs like “Seasons of Salt” encompass their whole sound in a compact nine minutes. It’s fast, elegant and can bring back some of the late 90s avant garde/doom/gothic/progressive death black sound found in Northern Europe, something Agalloch was also quite fond of.

There’s a lot of subtle surprises on Salt. From the ode to family that is “Augustus” which feels like a mix between a lullaby and some folky gospel to the quasi synthwave overture of the closing song “Ossify”. Let’s not forget the beautiful opening of “Glacial Cold” with its cello. Despite those moments, the album is a constant masterpiece without any boring sections or unnecessary parts. Aaron John Gregory’s vocals are surely the highlights for me. From raw and deep to soft and charismatic, he did a great job at the helm of Khôrada. He reminds me of Alan Averill (Primordial) with the way he can make clean vocals an eerie affair and still maintains an aura of darkness with the combination of his lyrical prowess and vocal exercises.

Gregory also wrote all the lyrics which are painting a pretty grim portrayal of Earth’s natural equilibrium. “Water Rights” speaks of how profit is ruining our resources and “Wave State” talks about how we’ll be destroyed by a drought and possibly engulfed under water as the Earth is destroyed. Regardless of the lyrical matter, I feel that their music isn’t without hope and the album serves more as a conceptual lecture about what sort of catastrophes the future has in stock for us than an arrogant warning written by someone who joined Greenpeace last week.

Nature is convinced
it's time for a sixth
extinction event
before man has the chance
to gnaw her to the bone


While I loved the album, I’m sure Khôrada can actually do better and I have high hopes for their future. Salt is both bright and grim, it’s both balanced and inventive and never forgets to be profound while maintaining an accessible approach.

Metantoine's Magickal Realm