Even though
Agalloch's career was essentially founded upon a fresh-sounding platform of black metal infused with folk music (their debut album was named
Pale Folklore, for Christ's sake!), the Oregonians proceeded to shift aesthetic gears over the years by following their black-folk-pagan sophomore masterpiece,
The Mantle, with a third long-player,
Ashes Against the Grain, that featured a no less inspired blend of gothic doom, death, and black metal, instead. 2008's
The White EP, then, appears to have been fashioned specifically to redress this progression, by jettisoning most every sign of heavy metal -- black, death, or otherwise -- so that the band could revisit (and expand) the haunting acoustic guitar frameworks and atmospheric backdrops that made them so unique to begin with. Sure enough, electric guitars are used very sparingly throughout, as mere accents and shimmering backdrops to the primary, acoustic guitar pluckings that dominate sublime creations like "The Isle of Summer" and "Birch Black" (both reminiscent of
Pale Folklore), and "Pantheist" (this one redolent of
The Mantle, in all its gothic folk glory). Vocals, too, are treated like some kind of unnecessary luxury here: figuring only as chorused "aahhhs'" in the last-mentioned track; as intimate whispers on the uncommonly lush "Sowilo Rune" (arguably the EP's most drop-dead gorgeous offering); and finally, crooning lyrics in the traditional sense for the straight-folk low point of "Birch White." The remaining two cuts consist of a synthesizer-woven beehive of sound named "Hollow Stone" and a stark, piano-led coda named "Summerisle Reprise," which along with "The Isle of Summer" and "Sowilo Rune," contains dialog sound bytes from the 1973 cult horror film, The Wicker Man (for those who hadn't yet grasped the connection between both works). And not coincidentally, like that movie's evocatively creepy soundtrack,
The White EP also plays like a half-hour cinematic score all its own -- which is surely as it was intended. As a result of all of these superlatives,
The White EP earns a special place within
Agalloch's formidable discography, virtually as essential as the group's stellar full-length albums.