Mad Chicken (Tomorrow Will Never Come - Agalloch)

Member Name: Frankingsteins

Product:	Tomorrow Will Never Come - Agalloch
Date:	04/11/07 (62 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Another nice acoustic song from Don Anderson.

Disadvantages: A pointless remix, and a pointlessly obscure release in general.

Portland’s Agalloch are one of the most interesting and creative metal bands remaining in America, despite (or perhaps due to) their primary influences far to the East... or is it West from over there? While their impressive, epic debut ‘Pale Folklore’ could have fooled Norwegian black metal bands into thinking it sprung from their nation’s own sonic loins, its long-awaited successor ‘The Mantle’ saw the band reach new heights of creativity, combining the bleak atmosphere and often harsh sound of their debut with delicate and equally skilled acoustic passages, still essentially continuing where Ulver left off but incorporating diverse influences from more local nature, cinema and art to produce a truly magnificent album. Agalloch toured extensively in the following years before updating their sound once again to the post-metal influenced ‘Ashes Against the Grain,’ constantly in motion but never skipping a beat.

So why is this release so rubbish?

The primary reason is that this limited edition, ultra-collectable E.P. was never intended for actual listening, distributed at shows and through personal contact as a range of only five hundred hand-signed vinyl records; the band could have recorded anything onto its short playing time and it still would have been snapped up by a loyal and ever-increasing fan base. As it happens, the material is all new and exclusive... in a way. Unlike the previous E.P. ‘Of Stone, Wind and Pillor,’ originally useful as a preview of the band’s new direction with ‘The Mantle’ and now still essential as that bridge between the early albums, ‘Tomorrow Will Never Come’ was always strictly a release aimed purely at hardcore collectors. Which is fortunate, as no one else would realistically be able to come by it, unless they enjoyed spending frivolously on eBay.

The two songs included here are unique to this E.P., though opening instrumental ‘The Death of Man (Version III)’ is, as the title suggests, a mere remix; and not a particularly impressive one at that. The acoustic melody and booming, echoed percussion will be disappointingly familiar to anyone familiar with ‘The Mantle,’ and far from being a logical or satisfying continuation of that album’s recurring musical theme, this is simply an exact reproduction of that album’s introductory track, slightly lengthened by adding a spacey intro and jazzed up with some discordant background effects, greater use of electric guitar fuzz, and bell chimes that add the distinct flavour of a Western to a song I originally envisioned taking place in the same dead and bitterly frozen forest that most of Agalloch’s music transports me to. It’s still a nice song, but as an entire side of vinyl it feels rather pointless, while its very nature as a near-identical replica of something even the most casual Agalloch fan already owns takes it into further realms of non-necessity.

So there we have it, one side over and done with, and the only real charm of this E.P. is whatever remains on the reverse. Another pleasant acoustic song played around the band’s dwindling campfire, ‘Tomorrow Will Never Come’ is nice enough, but hardly provides enough reason to justify the effort of tracking this thing down. The guitar strumming is excellent as expected, the marvellously human flaws making it even more flawless, and once again takes the listener on a musical journey from a minute-long jangly introduction through the main section, composed against sound clips from a documentary on schizophrenia. As the voices become more animated and distressed the guitar responds accordingly, before finally returning to a peaceable melody after everything cools off. There are some distinctly weird touches added to this song that serve to make it more disturbing and also more inviting to repeated listens, as whatever form of keyboard or synthesiser is providing the background effects switches between a distracting buzzing sound, like a bee or UFO, and a more pleasant and nautical accordion effect. Overall, this song is nice as an experiment into relationships between an evolving drama and its musical accompaniment (or to use the more general term, a soundtrack), but doesn’t represent a lost Agalloch classic so much as something guitarist Don Anderson could have cobbled together on a rainy day, when his parents forbade him from journeying into the woods to jam with his friends. There are many better examples of his talents in pretty much everything else the band has released, apart from this E.P.’s even less prestigious successor, ‘The Grey.’ You should definitely check out Agalloch, but not here, not like this.

Summary: 7" vinyl limited to 500 signed copies (2003).