Agony (Agoni) - The First Defiance (1988)

Agony (Post-Agoni) - The First Defiance (1988)

The final recording by Agony, formerly Agoni, The First Defiance. If you've checkout out their earlier material you'll see how they have changed from brutal punk to 5th rate thrash metal.

What's immediately noticeable is how tight they've become. On the previous demos, while still pretty tight, it's here that they've mastered their craft of thrash. The riffs are more cleanly executed, the drumming is on point with many strategically placed fills, the bass...i suppose holds down the rhythm end, nothing too exciting as per with thrash metal, and the vocals have grown out of the Baloff worship (well, Madness Reigns is an exception) from the previous demo.

My issue with thrash, and metal in general, is the overuse of riffs and trying too hard to be progressive/epic all the goddamn time. There's lots of stop-starts, space for fills, and unfortunately solos...Actually let me clear this up. Solos can be great, amazing even. But leaving long spaces in songs for doodling is not cool. If you're a guitar player, or someone like me who dicks about with guitars with retard fingers, no doubt you've left spaces in songs you've written so you can practice your soling. Cool, backing tracks are a good way to practice. But dooood, don't treat an actual song like a backing track. Chances are your amazing improvisations sound like shit, or are just not as amazing as you think they are.

I'm not saying Agony fall prey to this to the point where it's a fault. They're just playing thraaaaashh, maaaan. Its just a flaw in a genre for me. You know what? I blame Metallica, fucking Master of Puppets. That record inspired way too many bands to start being progressive (read: repetitive) as opposed to the punky Slayer approach.

Sweet Mary mother of Christ, what happened?

All of this sounds like i'm slagging this band off. But i'm not, honest. Night of the Emperor has a cool change in dynamic half way through, which is good as the record starts to drag by this point. Mass Manipulation has a cool moment towards the end, with thumping quarter note bass notes, giving an almost circus-like atmosphere. Obviously Deadly Legacy, from the earlier demos, has a neat guitar hook, and becomes the highlight of the record. Pretty sad that one of, if not the, best songs was written before the newer material.

So there you have it. They never really got as original or powerful as they should have. This is decent, but it's not something i'll be attracted to listen to multiple times.

Linky, Link:
http://www.mediafire.com/download/zmjmzzmgnna/A-TFD88-BYTM.zip