The Agony Scene plays a mishmash of vicious modern metalcore that draws from all facets of the genre's many sides. Raspy vocal snarls/growls? Check. Plenty of the typical melodic Swedish death metal style? You bet. A groovier rhythmic chugga chugga sort of vibe (ala later Living Sacrifice)? Yeah. Some straight thrash metal riffing and burly breakdowns? Indeed. A little bit of wacky discordance? Sure, some of that too. It's nothing new at all, but it's not bad, thanks in no small part to a slick recording job and songwriting that, while not so interesting, is pretty solid. I much prefer the riffing when the guitars work independently of one another rather than mirroring each other or sticking with straightforward harmonies, but the record holds to a brief running time that lets things work out in the end. "Lines of Suicide" kicks some thrashier riffing and nice harmonics (not the generic type) along with a quick dash of clean guitars mixed in, and "Nausea" begins with a clean intro using subtle feedback in the distance. There's almost a doomy sort of feel to the heavy, plodding chords that follow. This is definitely the standout of the disc - far more sinister and stylistically streamlined than the other songs. They also do the 1,000,000th cover of The Rolling Stones' "Paint it Black". I fucking hate that song, I've always hated that song, and every cover of that song seems to somehow manage to be awful, that being the case here as well - introducing some terrible singing vocals and just in general ruining the flow of the record right before the final track. They definitely should've forgone that grievous error. The production is pretty damn good. The drums are a little bit rigid (barely) and the mix could use some tightening up, but there's a lot of texture and it sounds heavy as fuck, and that's the most important thing here. Nothing particularly jumps out at me as bothersome. Everything on this label just has an insanely awesome layout, and this one's no different. Everything is printed on matte paper with tons of rich red colors, decorative textures, bold text, lots of blank space, etc. Every spread has a large photo of a band member alongside a bold quote of lyrics (none of the complete lyrics are printed) and some minimal information about the recording. A nice idea, but I must confess that the band photos are horrendously cheesy. They look cool just because of the colors and the textures, but the whole "five guys with the same really bad haircut staring eerily into the camera from very close-up" thing doesn't fly with me at all. Overall this is an unoriginal record that's performed well and presented professionally. It's not required listening by any means, but I can get into it.
[Solid State]
Running time - 35:58, Tracks: 10
[Notable tracks: Lines of Suicide, Nausea, Vivid]
Solid State Records - http://www.solidstaterecords.com
