I Agonised over this
Last Christmas eve I was reviewing black metal (Bewitched) and I will probably go to Hull for that, so this year I’m taking it easy on this most festive of occasions and kicking back with some extreme Screamcore. Ho ho ho as I said last year (I’m into recycling).
‘Get Damned’ is the third album from ‘The Agony Scene’ (TAS) but having not heard the other two I can’t tell you whether this is a progression or any of those other things people write to fill up paragraphs. What I can tell you is that this is a brilliantly produced steam train of an album that will not so much roll over you but smash you right out of the way. As I said the production is first class with everything given its own space in the mix; Ryan Folden plays the drums with machine like precision while Chris Emmons and Brian Hodges provide seriously heavy riffs to get the heads nodding before exploding into chainsaw chaos that will have mosh pits full of elbows.
Vocalist Mike Williams screams venom from a throat that even strepsils won’t help, this isn’t one for the lightweight metal listener, this is scream in your face aggressive metal, the kind your parents warned you about, mix this with video games and you’ll be dysfunctional before you can say “reload”.
So it goes on, no let up, just jumping about Hardcore but done very very well, this is the second time in a week I’ve said this and I don’t like hardcore; maybe it’s evolving finally.
If I had to criticise something it would be the tendency for songs to sound a little similar, sometimes a song will end and after the shortest of pauses another one will begin but sounding like a continuation of the first, if I hadn’t had my eye on the cd counter I might have thought it was just a mid song pause. This is a feature of the genre though and not a reflection of the band who have written some bulldozing material here.
TAS are touring these shores in March with Himsa so go check them out if you fancy a frantic jump about, this album gets release over here mid February according to the press release though it took me all of ten seconds to find it for sale right now through a major internet retailer. Press releases always lie but I’m not sure they should do it about release dates. Kinda counter-productive.
http://www.theagonyscene.net/