I sent Jonny one of those buddy discounts from Amazon.com (BTW, you should be clicking through our site for all your Amazon purchases, including used
stuff. It takes like two seconds and will help us improve the site with
all kindsa fancy shit [I should have said that in a review someone
would actually read]) when I bought this. He though that with a name
and album title like that, Agoraphobic Nosebleed must be either a joke
or idiotic. It’s hard to tell, but it seems like these guys are pulling
the “I hate everyone, I’m so dark” routine but they also have a sense
of humor about it. In other words, they’re a little bit of both. I
don’t really care what their stance is, the music sounds pretty good.
What it sounds like: I think this can be classified as Power Violence,
i.e. the stuff played by the likes of Spazz and Romantic Gorilla, i.e.
a chaotic hybrid of death metal and hardcore with lots of shifts and
changes. But AN have more of a metal sound than most power violence
acts, with more precise riffs and generally better musicianship. Things
get especially chaotic thanks to the use and abuse of a drum machine in
place of one of those pesky sacks of flesh.
I’ll put it this way. If they did a remake of Back to the Future,
in the part where Marty pretends to melt his father’s brain with a
walkman, he would be playing Agoraphobic Nosebleed instead of Van
Halen. At least, he would be if I directed. Still, this album fell a
bit short of my expectations. For some reason, when I hear elements of
brilliance in a band’s previous work, I always buy their next album
believing that it will be the one on which they pull everything
together. This album features some electronic stuff which is a good
idea, but it’s never really integrated with the heavy stuff properly.
I’d like to hear even crazier beats and rhythms that have next to
nothing to do with how human beings play drums. Also, more vocal range
and guitar and bass that wander from the bottom five frets more than
once every third song. In other words, I want it to be more hectic and
cacophonous. These guys are onto something, but I want to hear some
shit that would really melt the brain of a person from the 50’s instead
of just scaring them.
Ruthless Ratings
- Buy it or Burn it: Hard to find, easy to buy.
- Quantify it: 6