Earth
Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light I
Southern Lord

Ever since they returned from their nine year hiatus with Hex; Or Printing in the Infernal Method in 2005, Earth’s patented drone doom has shown significant trending toward a dark, apocalyptic, Americana sound; they’ve long since replaced the fuzz and feedback of earlier albums with clean, mournful rhythms of a dusty and desolate gothic Western landscape. Their latest, Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light I, follows the conceptual blueprint laid out by Hex, Hibernaculum, and The Bees Made Honey in the Lion’s Skull, laying its soul bare, like an old man at the end of his days embracing death beautifully and without any fanfare. It pours (slowly, of course, like molasses) an hour’s worth of rich, hypnotic sustain — thanks in large part to the abundance of soft cello and bass — into five songs (best appreciated as a whole, as usual), punctuated perfectly by weary harmonics that you might swear are crying out to you. While not entirely memorable or new, this album is still good, and Earth’s main man, Dylan Carlson, continues to prove he’s a master craftsman, a man capable of mesmerizing and enlightening us, even when we’ve heard it all before. And yes, Earth fans, that I in the title means that II is on the way.

Listen to “Descent to the Zenith” from Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light I!

Agalloch
Marrow of the Spirit
Profound Lore

A babbling brook; chirping birds; the slow, mournful lament of a cello. Thus, Agalloch’s latest wintry tour is revealed to us, drawn in running watercolours of black and grey. Marrow of the Spirit, just the band’s fourth full-length in 13 years and first since 2006′s Ashes Against the Grain, thrives on a cold and desolate atmosphere the band has come to make distinctly their own through a hybrid of progressive folk and black metal, meaning songs like “Into the Painted Grey,” “The Watcher’s Monolith,” and “Ghosts of the Midwinter Fires” sound like wolves carefully devouring frost-bitten corpses while the album’s grand opus, the 17-and-a-half minute “Black Lake Nidstång” and its closer “To Drown,” swirl around you in whispers of smoke from a pit of dying embers, the former eventually roaring back to life, the latter succumbing to its inevitable extinction. Marrow of the Spirit is incredibly rich and powerful in scope, weaving chilling intricacies with brutal ferocity for a devotedly earthly sound no doubt enhanced by its analog recording. Not just an impressive album by Agalloch standards, but an impressive album by any standards.

Listen to “The Watcher’s Monolith” from Marrow of the Spirit!

Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan
Hawk
Vanguard Records

Yeah, okay, so the folksy, sultry tunes of Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan don’t exactly fall in with the rank and file of doom, metal, and stoner rock that you usually find around here, but the fact of the matter is — if you don’t know this already — Lanegan is a bad-ass, whiskey-voiced deity in the Broken Beard universe. The guy could put out a polka record and I’d still tell you about it because everything he touches (Screaming Trees, The Gutter Twins, Soulsavers, etc.) turns to pure grit, which is what makes his collaborations with Isobel Campbell so great. She, former member of indie pop band Belle & Sebastian, is innocence incarnate, the Scottish girl-next-door with the porcelain voice, and he is the brooding American desperado at the end of the bar. Put ‘em together and you get an old suitcase full of black and white photographs, tear-stained love letters, faded memories, long distance calls from a phone booth in the middle of nowhere, and wordless nights on a porch swing. Hawk, their third album together, is a whole barn full o’ jukebox flare, rustling up a roving range of country-folk, blues, soul, gospel, and Americana, calling to mind the eras and auras of Cash and Carter, Dylan and Baez. Campell’s songwriting on Hawk is utterly moving, playing emotion better than any instrument on the album, and is at once light, languid, deep, and desolate. To help the mood along, the album also offers a few Townes Van Zandt covers and a couple of appearances by Willy Mason. But, as always, this is the Campbell and Lanegan show, which continues to be the strangest, most beautiful show on earth.

Check out the video for “You Won’t Le Me Down Again” from Hawk!