Forestheart

This is one of those widely-lauded bands that I simply don't get no matter how much I listen to it. Marblebog's music is nice and friendly enough to be mildly enjoyable or at the very least listenable but I have no idea where the majestic, life-affirming music that this band apparently spews out so liberally is hidden on 'Forestheart'. Maybe it can be found under some particular rock I haven't overturned in the titular forest, but I've spent enough time dwelling in it and I'm ready to head back to civilization now.

Marblebog is ostensibly a black metal band, but it seems to be, in my estimation, one by aesthetic only. I see very, very little important difference between this and, say, Agalloch, and the riffing has almost nothing to do with black metal save the most passing of resemblances to some of 'Transilvanian Hunger''s textured chords and the mere fact that the guitars are generally tremolo based. Marblebog will appeal to Agalloch fans far before Bathory fans, and I think this is a detail about this music that a lot of people seem to be skimming over in their appraisals of 'Forestheart': this isn't really a black metal album and shouldn't be regarded as such.

So how is this from the perspective of an Agalloch-style pseudo-rock-style, occasionally extreme metal album? It's okay, and okay only. Marblebog's music is slow (apart from a single mid-to-fast tempo track) and mildly depressive in nature, with rock-based drumming lumbering under an array of foresty tremolo riffing and screechy vocals. The riffs are textured and melodic, and while seemingly well composed aren't really interesting at all. It's difficult for me to remember what any of them sound like or really know where one excruciatingly long track ends and the next begins, as all are based off the same bare handful of musical elements driven brutally into the ground.

I suppose this album is very, very mildly original in the sense that the riffs aren't super melodic, tending to employ stranger chord shapes and a more dissonant sense of melody than a lot of other bands in this same style. Of course, this comes at the cost of having melodies that are interesting or memorable; most of the riffs come off as sets of vaguely purposed arrangements of blunt power chords droning around each other before coming to a rather half-assed resolution and looping back. In fact, even the incredibly minor amount of originality that Marblebog exhibits in this manner is maybe too much, given that all the riffs sound identical, and the static, screeching vocal performance that hovers around overhead contributes nothing to the body of the music.

'Forestheart' never really goes anywhere but sure takes an enormous amount of time getting there; the sprawling ambient outro is probably the worst offender at a mind-numbing thirteen minutes and change, managing to very lazily wrap up an already comatose album. There's nothing offensive about this music, really; the worst I can say is that it's just utterly boring and pointless to an absurd degree, which, admittedly, is really worse than being genuinely bad. I simply don't understand what the appeal of this music is; it sits around, repeats itself, and eventually falls asleep like a narcoleptic: frequently, immediately, and with absolutely no sense of timing.