Win Tickets ($70): Agalloch @ Crystal Ballroom | Dark Metal, w/ The Keening & Thief

We are giving away a pair of tickets to Agalloch @ Crystal Ballroom on September 23. To win, comment below on this post why you’d like to attend. Winner will be drawn and emailed September 18.

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From our sponsors:
Agalloch
The Keening
Thief
September 23, 2023
6:30PM Doors, 8PM Show | All Ages
GA $30 ADV, $35 Doors
21+ Reserved Balcony $40 ADV, $45 Doors
More info: crystalballroompdx.com

Crystal Ballroom
1332 W Burnside St, Portland, OR 97209

For twenty years the Portland-based Dark Metal group Agalloch defined what it meant to combine influences from a variety of musical genres into one brooding, colossal, and cinematic sound. Over the course of five full-length albums and several EPs, they provided the soundtrack to existential themes concerning man, nature, loss, metaphysics, and death.

Following their disbandment in 2016, Agalloch will return to the stage for very selective shows. The band earned a reputation for explosive and emotional live performances and would take special care constructing the environment of each show with wood, incense, and imagery taken directly from their home in the Pacific Northwest. Such care makes an Agalloch show more than just a typical heavy metal concert.

The Keening
The Keening-the solo music project of Rebecca Vernon-weaves a web of lush orchestration, American Gothic sensibilities and wintry murder ballads set against a backdrop of dark, shimmering folk. Vernon’s previous band SubRosa echoes in The Keening’s chamber doom, flowing with flute, strings, harp, French horn, piano, organ and hammered dulcimer. Ultra-melodic forays into haunted bogs, endless wells, secret crimes, jeweled cages and the unenviable curse of being a murder witness abound. Dark as this sounds, there is always a light at the end of the tunnel.

Rebecca Vernon was the owner, lead singer, guitarist and primary songwriter of Salt Lake City’s acclaimed SubRosa. She ended that 13-year project in 2018 to focus on The Keening. ?

Celebrated “Engine-ear” and bassist Billy Anderson collaborated with Vernon and Witch Mountain drummer Nathan Carson as co-producers on the recording of the album. A host of Portland’s finest session musicians lent their talents to the album, including Andrea Morgan of Exulansis on violin. Anderson, Carson, and Morgan form the nucleus of Vernon’s new live backing band, as well.

The Keening is primed to release this brand new album via Relapse Records in 2023. More information about the album will be made available in the weeks and months to come.

Thief
Hailing from Los Angeles, Thief is the brainchild of Dylan Neal, a dulcimer player for the critically acclaimed experimental black metal band Botanist. During his time with Botanist, Neal began to experiment with a new sound. Deeply inspired by sacred vocal harmonics, Gregorian chants and the limitlessness of electronic music, he began to connect the dots between the new and ancient; tonalities of the past and sonic expressions of the future. This involved crate-digging for strange medieval hymns and in turn melding them with both electronic and dark metal elements.