“All your coaxing will only make
a bitter fruit—
let them cling, ripen of themselves,
test their own worth,
nipped, shrivelled by the frost,
to fall at last but fair
with a russet coat.”
Today I'm going to write about an album that changed my life:
Alda's "Passage."
Cascadian Black Metal was a term used
often on blogs and amidst the interwebz, here and there,
attempting to further divide and scatter Black Metal purists and
puritanism - this wasn't without humorous derision. With critical darlings Wolves in the Throne Room and Agalloch spearheading the geographical and ecological assault – hearkening back to a progenitor in Seattle's Weakling – and several other groups coming from a similar, seemingly Derrick Jensen and ELF-informed spiritual philosophy (see Addaura, Ash Borer, Skagos, and many other geographically distant bands such as Kentucky's Panopticon to those as far flung as Ireland's Altar of Plagues, there was a lot of common ground, even if the artists themselves weren't operating collectively. Frustration with politics, obsession with nature, and a desire to burn things down and start again rule the day here. Controlled burns have been with us since we were homo erectus, but things didn't turn sour until we became late capitalists. One such group is Tacoma, Washington's Alda. Formed in 2008, their 2011 release, “Tahoma,” was a grand buffet of atmospherics and bombast. Clean and sometimes chant-like vocals framed running water and other, presumably field-recorded-sumptuousness before blastbeats and baritone howls drove home the message. Think The Conet Project curated by Count Grishnackh.
Their third full-length, “Passage,” begins with “The Clearcut,” female and clean male vocals intertwining with acoustic guitar and string bass as vocalist and drummer, Michael Korchonnoff, sings “Though our hearts will ring hollow, in the silence of the clearcut...we'll find no sign on these slopes and fields, nor in the fates we have written in the scars of the land.” Nearing the four minute mark, the song explodes into frenetic blastbeat drums and distorted guitar, giving way to a lower pitched howl than we're used to getting from black metal, but a howl it still is. “Passage” has moments of slow, chorded fourths and fifths that come in ritualized, droning plods. One gets the sense of glaciers slowly metal and re-forming, perhaps slightly diminished as the years pass. For all of its stripped-down yet lush serenity, have no doubt the teeth here are sharp.
“For this beauty,
Beauty without strength,
Chokes out life.”
The third track, “Weathering” slowly builds from acoustic guitars, to distorted, simple chords with a slow, serene melody overlayed. The drums go from four on the floor to double bass, to snare rolls, never quite reaching blastbeats, before breaking into the clearing with a Jeremiah Johnson snippet. The ascent begins again, with acoustic guitars, into electric but initially subdued leads. It builds. Tom hits come in – accenting this switchback, a path has brought us higher than the previous trail. This is confirmed when the blastbeats finally do enter, with less than two minutes remaining.
“The Crooked Trail” opens with three chords that almost sound shoegazy in a Smashing Pumpkins circa Siamese Dream distortion field. The snarls remind us that more is at stake. Black metal was never about technicality, and while the musicianship is evident with Alda, they're not afraid to keep it simple for the first four minutes here. T overdubbed guitars of Jace Bruton mix so well that it's difficult to notice them at times. This changes with the tremolo picking at the song's halfway mark, two guitars clearly playing contrapuntally while the drums crescendo before the clean yells enter. Just after the 6' mark, the vocals twist to screams again. Each stop and start is another break in the clouds in this snakelike path. After another acoustic interlude and build, the vocals enter yet again, this time more desperate and ragged than before, and the song rides out the slow churn to the ten minute mark. A fire burns in the background. Are we at a campsite, or has the edifice at last been ignited? Are we privy here to the initial sparks?
Water cascades and gushes over rocks and an acoustic guitar fades in. A beautiful major chord progression washes over us, minimal drums perfectly accenting a hopefulness that Black Metal so rarely affords us. Perhaps this is the legacy of any philosophical whole that binds the northwest sound. Boreas breathes frostily, but the verdancy of the summer, the presence of deciduous Douglas Fir is always there as a reminder that life bursts from the seams here. If the visual cues are not enough, the overlaid female vocals, the subtle use of strings, the aptly sparse percussion serves as harbinger of Spring. “Passage” attempts to and succeeds at being Alda's finest and most mature work to date.
9/10
Poem snippets are from Hilda Doolitte's “Sheltered Garden."
References
Music
-Alda, 2015, Passage, Available on YouTube here
-Alda, 2011, Tahoma, Available on YouTube here
Books/Websites
-Hilda Doolittle, at Poetry Foundation
