Over the course of five full-lengths, Agalloch have refined an arresting hybrid of black metal, neofolk, doom and post-metal. As we wait for the follow-up to 2014’s excellent The Serpent and the Sphere (which will probably appear circa 2018 given their track record), bassist Jason William Walton (a.k.a. Nothing) has kept busy. Walton recently completed two-song 7-inch, Mara (Red Orchard), consisting of field recordings and largely focused on his struggles with sleep paralysis. Second track “Yakshi” features guest vocals by Tanner Anderson (Obsequiae, Celestiial), and is streaming below.
“I wrote the Mara EP as a way to process and document my episodes with sleep paralysis,” Walton writes. “‘Yakshi’ is the second and final track of Mara, and deals with the terror and helplessness one experiences when in the throes of sleep paralysis. In this state, your mind is awake, yet your body is paralyzed. Your cries of desperation travel no further than your own head and are obscured by the buzzing waves of darkness. ‘Yakshi’ encapsulates this experience and gives me surges of anxiety each time I listen.”
