Arbor – The Plutonian Shore

July 13, 2012 • self-released

Like many others, I am of the opinion that Agalloch is a fine band. They've got their own thing going and they do it well. One thing we don't need, though, is any more Agalloch copycat bands, and Arbor is a perfect example of why. They put in a decent effort, but the end product winds up being bland and unoriginal.

Anyone following United States-based black metal lately can probably guess exactly what they're going to get out of this album: melodic guitar lines, an abundance of folky clean guitar bridges, heavy yet blast-free drumming, overdramatic clean vocals, and the like. On the surface it's not too bad, with one exception: the singing. Oh god, the singing. Just calling it "bad" doesn't do it justice. This guy can't sing at all. I'm amazed they let him actually record for this album, especially since the instruments are all performed quite competently. It makes hearing the singing that much more jarring. (The harsh vocals are hit-and-miss—sometimes they're well done and sometimes they sound awful. I'm not sure why that happens.)

The songs themselves can get a bit uncomfortable to listen to as well, simply because their arrangements seem very sloppy. While they write a lot of nice individual sections with some catchy rhythms and riffs, putting them together is a problem. They never seem to want to stick with one section for more than a few seconds at a time and are constantly switching back and forth from heavy sections to soft sections. It's also quite jarring, and makes the songs incredibly difficult to follow—not to mention less memorable since for each one there's nothing unifying to keep your bearings.

None of that is helped by the fact that, as I mentioned earlier, they don't have a very original sound; they are working with a lot of black metal clichés and aren't bringing much new to the table. For someone who isn't much into the genre I suppose that might not be a problem, but for me at least all I can think of is how much I'd rather catch up on other black metal.

Arbor may have some talent, but The Plutonian Shore isn't a very good display of that talent. Maybe a couple years maturing will be better for their sound but right now they are definitely skippable. In the meantime I'm off to refresh myself on Marrow of the Spirit.

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