Agalloch @ Thalia Hall, Chicago (US)

AGALLOCH / BARREN HEIR / John Haughm

Date: 12th August, 2026
Venue: Thalia Hall
Ticket Price: $35(+fees) / €30(+fees)
Promoter: n/a

DimK: By popular demand, AGALLOCH had to extend their live activities. The festival appearances had simply been too good for people to miss the opportunity to see the band live. The eight-year silence was long, so it should have come as no surprise that fans were asking the band to visit their town, or at least somewhere within traveling distance, even at a time when touring has become increasingly expensive for fans and bands alike.

Chicago was one of the lucky cities to get AGALLOCH, making it up to those fans who could not attend this year's ‘Milwaukee Metal Fest’. Even the Chicago weather had decided to take a break from being ugly, making the Wednesday commute kind of normal. Before the show started, a line of people was already snaking its way toward the Thalia Hall merch table, another strong indication of the excitement surrounding AGALLOCH's return.

The opening set belonged to the band's singer/guitarist John Haughm. Thirty minutes after 7pm, the projection screen came alive with images that looked as though they belonged to the silent-film era, with a strong focus on Western aesthetics. Wearing a cowboy hat and round sunglasses, Haughm waited by stage left as the projections slowly built the mood. His set combined visuals and instrumental music, focusing almost entirely on creating a black-and-white atmosphere populated by images from yesteryear. The quote “Every night and every morn, some to misery are born,” as heard in the Jim Jarmusch movie “The Dead Man”, accompanied Haughm as he started playing “Born To Endless Night”. Usually, during instrumental sets, even occasional chatter can become extremely annoying and distracting. This time, though, the audience chose immersion over distraction, making the entire experience even better.

I loved the “Twilight Zone” reference from the episode “Mr. Garrity And The Graves”, where the main character announces, “Tonight, dear friends, tonight at midnight, happiness will reign in Happiness, Arizona. The dead will be returned to you.” “To Thine Barbed Wire Noose Be True” added an eerie layer to the atmosphere, while images of sandstorms and barren earth perfectly matched the soundscape. “CAST In The Shape Of 1878” naturally transitioned into “A River Of IRON Flows Where Once The Gallows Stood”. For this one, and perfectly synchronized with the video projection, Haughm used a piece of bone to play the guitar, creating a groove that matched the sounds of steam escaping from an engine. It felt as though we were onboard a train traveling through vast, empty landscapes, with some unknown sense of hope keeping the passengers moving forward.

The quote “Life is a memory, and then it is nothing” hit hard before “A Fine Hymn To Die To” brought the thirty-minute set to an end. Somehow, it felt much longer, but only because the experience had traveled through such a wide range of emotions. This was an excellent way to open the show.

John Haughm

DimK: After the cinematic experience of Haughm's half-hour performance, it was up to BARREN HEIR to cleanse the palate and smooth the transition toward AGALLOCH. I say this knowing there is not a lot of obvious common ground between BARREN HEIR's Sludge Metal and the headliner's wide-ranging music, which moves from Black Metal to Post-Metal with plenty of gradients in between.

Still, hearing the three-piece build its monolithic sound through Adam Thorsness' pounding drums, Eddie Limperis' lead-footed basslines, and David Kirsch's reverb-soaked guitar made perfect sense, with plenty of heads nodding in silent agreement. The minimal lyrics arrived through near-screamed vocals that matched the hard-hitting tempos, while swampy bass lines and riffs seemed to crawl directly out of the fog.

The way Limperis approached the mic stand, often rising onto his toes to scream/growl the lyrics, added another level of desperation, anguish, or simply pure energy that perfectly matched the band's mid-tempo attack. “Patient” and “Take Away” were the two songs that hit the hardest, and unless I am mistaken, the latter closed the set. With the spacious sound of Thalia Hall working in their favor, BARREN HEIR delivered their pounding Sludge in optimum form. Hearing Haughm later explain that AGALLOCH had personally hand-picked the Chicago band as direct support made complete sense.

BARREN HEIR

MariaV: If you had told my 23-year-old self that I would see AGALLOCH live three times within the span of two months, I would never have believed you. But here we were, witnessing the atmospheric Portland band for the third time following their 2023 return to live performances. After watching this show, too, I have to tip my hat to these fine gentlemen for refusing to stick to a sterile setlist and instead constantly reshaping things to suit the occasion.

Playing Thalia Hall is no small feat. Simply standing up close in front of this emblematic stage is an experience in itself. AGALLOCH, however, came well-prepared and showed that they live for nights like this. The venue was well filled by 9:20pm when the lights dimmed, the crowd greeted them with a loud cheer, and the band took their positions in the shadows with almost no ceremony. The first notes of “Limbs” filled the room, and it did not take long before everyone in attendance was fully immersed in the AGALLOCH cosmos. To me, watching an AGALLOCH show feels like opening a sacred vault, leaving your deepest and most private emotions exposed, and allowing the songs to hit them like merciless waves moving toward catharsis. There were moments when I simply wanted to sit down on the wooden floor, close my eyes, and surrender completely to the music. At other times, the sound dragged bitter memories along with it. But we were all there together, so somehow none of it felt lonely. Yes, live shows can still do that.

“As Embers Dress The Sky” is one of my favorite songs - not only from the band's discography - so seeing it placed second in the set took me by surprise. Of course, being in the photopit was not exactly the ideal situation for headbanging, but watching John Haughm and Don Anderson exchange riffs from that close is an image now permanently engraved in memory. “Hallways Of Enchanted Ebony” followed, accompanied by an incredible and colorful light show that provided the perfect contrast to the song's bleak, dark atmosphere.

“Well, hello again, Chicago. It's been a minute,” were John's first words of the night, breaking the silence and accumulated momentum after 28 minutes of uninterrupted music. “We're gonna do something a little different now. This is 30 years old. It was recorded in November of 1996, and it's our first demo: “The Wilderness”.” I had the chance to watch AGALLOCH perform this song during their first set at ‘Milwaukee Metal Fest’, but somehow it felt different inside Thalia Hall. “Until the day I turn to stone, I shall die alone, among the wilderness,” were the lyrics that hit the hardest, while watching Jason William Walton remain an absolute rock onstage, steady and infallible as his fingers worked the bass strings, was quite the sight.

The first notes of “Dark Matter Gods” received a loud cheer, and the explosive riff that followed immediately brought a forest of raised horns inside the dark hall. John's whispery singing sounded remarkably close to the 2014 recording before turning fully aggressive during the “keeper of mystery and malevolent patriarch of chaos” lyric line. It still escapes me how “The Serpent & The Sphere” LP can possibly be 12 years old already. The clapping that greeted Anderson's solo toward the end was the wake-up call I needed to land back in reality.

The first songs of the night from the “Ashes Against The Grain” album arrived through the uninterrupted “This White Mountain On Which You Will Die” / “Fire Above, Ice Below” combination, sending us 20 years back in time. Hunter Ginn and Anderson started in perfect sync, gradually pulling the tempo down, while our bodies moved left and right almost instinctively with the music. I bet that if someone had been watching from the surrounding balconies, they would have seen a sea of bodies seemingly floating and moving in sync with AGALLOCH's sounds. Imagine that.

The next guitar change happened quickly, with John asking, “Who wants to hear something from “The Mantle”?” Naturally, a loud cheer answered this ridiculously rhetorical question, so you can imagine the reaction when he continued: “How about three songs in a row from “The Mantle”? Let's start with “Odal”.” The constant buildup and guitar chords that shape this instrumental piece all the way toward its crescendo make you realize just how beautiful these melodies really are. The acoustic and clean guitars take control of your emotions without even asking permission. The archetypal AGALLOCH piece and all-time favorite “I Am The Wooden Doors” followed immediately afterward, just as it does on the record, and remains perhaps the closest thing on “The Mantle” to an outright Black Metal song. But man, hearing that flawless clean-guitar work live was easily one of the night's highlights.

If you are reading these lines, you probably already know that AGALLOCH do not need to write conventionally heavy music to make their atmosphere devastating, and hearing “You Were But A Ghost In My Arms” live proved exactly that. John became visibly frustrated when his pedal-board malfunctioned halfway through the song, apparently losing power, but honestly, we did not care. The incident did not break the atmosphere at all. Listening to this track live still felt like a dream, and if anything, that small hiccup added some life and unpredictability to the experience. This is what watching a band play LIVE actually means.

“Well, that was a f'n disaster,” John commented immediately afterward. “Lost power in the middle of the song, but that's Rock 'N Roll, right?” He then thanked BARREN HEIR, explaining that having them as support for the evening had been the band's personal choice, before continuing: “With that, I think we're gonna get out of here. There's a reissue of “Marrow Of The Spirit” coming out in September, and we got Markus Stock Schwadorf from EMPYRIUM remixing this, and all I can say is it sounds awesome. We're gonna play a song from that album.” That was the perfect introduction to the 12-minute “Into The Painted Grey”, which served up a monolithic chunk of BATHORY-like coolness while mixing Black Metal and Post-Rock elements in near-perfect proportions.

The band left the stage, but no one moved an inch. It had already been a long night, and plenty of emotions were still stirring inside, but you bet we wanted more.

As a spoken movie excerpt filled the room, AGALLOCH returned to the stage. It felt appropriate that they would offer us a small portion of their second ‘Milwaukee Metal Fest’ set through three songs from “Ashes Against The Grain”. The first moshpit of the night erupted during “Falling Snow”, splitting the floor of Thalia Hall right down the middle as the circular shoving ritual took over. “Our Fortress Is Burning... I” and “Our Fortress Is Burning... II: Bloodbirds” landed back-to-back for the next 12 minutes, delivered with all the dexterity, mastery, and confidence of a band that respects the audience standing in front of them enough to give everything for 110 f'n minutes.

This was an incredible experience, and if you asked me whether I would go see them again tomorrow, the answer would be “yes, in a heartbeat.”

Don't - and I cannot stress this enough - miss this.

“I wish to die with my will and spirit intact
The will that inspired me to write these words”

AGALLOCH setlist:

01. "Limbs"
02. "As Embers Dress The Sky"
03. "Hallways Of Enchanted Ebony"
04. "The Wilderness"
05. "Dark Matter Gods"
06. "This White Mountain On Which You Will Die"
07. "Fire Above, Ice Below"
08. "Odal"
09. "I Am The Wooden Doors"
10. "You Were But A Ghost In My Arms"
11. "Into The Painted Grey"
12. "Falling Snow"
13. "Our Fortress Is Burning... I"
14. "Our Fortress Is Burning... II: Bloodbirds"

AGALLOCH