Agalloch - From Which of this Oak (2009)

In the past couple of years many people have come to know the name Agalloch but personally I first heard the band back in the autumn of 2000 through one of the songs on the 1996 cassette tape ‘From Which of this Oak.’ Back then Agalloch wasn’t a well known name in the underground, in fact not too many knew them at all. ‘Pale Folklore’ caused a bit of a stir in the metal underground in 1999, but it seems it really wasn’t until ‘The Mantle’ in 2002 that Agalloch was truly recognized. Back in late 2000 I got my hands on both Pale Folklore and From which of this Oak. At first I really didn’t even know what I was hearing, because I had never heard anything like it before. Never had such beauty, grace or originality met with my ears. I knew these guys would be huge one day.

Fast forward to September of 2009 and I find Agalloch doing a few gigs in the Midwest where I live. I was thrilled to say the least. At the gig was limited merchandise, one item of which and much to my surprise was a picture vinyl re-release of the demo that got me started on the band nearly nine years earlier.

I won’t delve much into the actual sound of this recording since I’m sure you’ve either downloaded the demo or perhaps even bought the ‘Demonstration Archive’ CD they released in 2008. Even so From Which of this Oak is surely the most metal recording Agalloch ever released showcasing mostly faster instrumentation with influences of Scandinavian melodic death metal, black metal, and just a tiny bit of doom metal. Not surprisingly the ambient, acoustic, post rock and progressive tendencies that would become such a huge part of the bands later recordings is nearly absent on this debut demo.

As for the actual LP; the first thing that really caught my attention was the photo of John Haughm on Side A, which featured a rather melancholic looking Haughm in some dilapidated area whilst he was decked out in gauntlets, a bullet belt and in hand he brandished a rapier. Nice. The photo of Don on the reverse side is interesting as well since he has long hair and spiky gauntlets to boot. Seeing these old photos you can’t help wondering if Agalloch was intended to be a much blacker metal oriented group. Additionally this re-release also comes with a foldout poster and it’s limited to 900 copies. If you missed out on this LP I’m sure you’ll regret it, just the same way I regretted selling that original demo tape a few years ago, but thankfully both this LP reissue and the aforementioned Demonstration Archive have brought these songs back.