Album of the day: Falloch – Where Distant Spirits Remain

Lovingly pinched from Metal Ireland: You’ll remember a while back that I was going all doe-eyed over Alcest’s essential Ecailles De Lune. Not to labour the point too much, but with Agalloch having gone off the boil and no new Empyrium record for far too long, it rightfully claimed its place as the best in pastoral, atmospheric metal.

Then – and who could have seen it? – a mini British boom in just this style. First, Fen, with their excellent Malediction Fields and shortly afterwards Winterfylleth with their Mercian Sphere from 2010. They say good things come in threes. So now it’s the turn of Scotland’s Falloch, who have almost equalled the former and certainly bettered the latter with this fantastic debut.

The demure looking duo have put together one of the most beguiling and well crafted albums to come out of the UK underground in ages.

I’m not going to slag them for name dropping the likes of Yann Tiersen (the Amelie soundtrack) and Avro Part into their list of influences. Where other people do that, you’d be inclined to roll your eyes. Like Alcest though, the important about Falloch is that it seems genuine. There’s no denying the atmosphere on this cd, right from the very start, and in fairness, it does emanate from an appreciation of people like the above.

The clean sung vocals have that soft, slightly boyish quality of both Agalloch and Alcest – it’s becoming something of a genre trope at this stage. Again, fair enough though, because vulnerability is a large part of what makes these bands what they are.

Continue reading: Metal Ireland » Blog Archive » Falloch | ‘Where Distant Spirits Remain’.

Tags: Album of the day, black metal, candlelight records, Falloch, Metal Ireland, shoegaze, Where Distant Spirits Remain

This entry was posted on Friday, August 5th, 2011 at 11:44 am and is filed under 2011, Album of the Day, Roadburn Recommended . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.