ALBUM REVIEW - The Agonist - 'Prisoners'

I received this disc through in the post a few days ago. It was late due to the bank holiday. Fucking Queen.

So! We have here eleven tracks of angry, Canadian metal. I guess that should be mehtal? Following on from 2009's 'Lullabies For The Dormant Mind', which was an utter barnstormer, the album always had a lot to live up to. Does it? Yes and no. It depends if you wanted 'Lullabies...' part two, really. To expect the band to do that would have been a little unfair though, especially considering the schizophrenic mix of styles present on their previous disc.

So this album, then, should be seen as an evolution of the previous sound. It's notably less difficult to keep track of what's going on, despite longer compositions, and the songs tend to go for the jugular instead of dismembering you slowly. It's like the difference between an axe murderer and that dude from Saw.

Two tracks have been heard before its release on the two-track EP 'The Escape'. There are no instrumental tracks as such (the last album had a version of Swan Lake), although the first single 'Ideomotor' does contain an extended jam at the end, which was pretty cool. The instrumentation is still top-notch, with some mind-melting fretwork. The drums seem a little more straightforward this time which was a little disappointing at first, at least until this was considered in the context of the rest of the songs, after which it made a lot more sense. The vocals are consistent from the last two albums, alternating between growls, screams and melodic vocals. You could liken Alissa White-Gluz to what would happen if Stephen Fry and Christian Alvestam had a child, and that child was a screaming blue-haired lady. Why Fry, you ask? Read the lyrics. You'll learn about things.

Happily, when the music kicks back into acoustic or slower passages, the intensity isn't lost, and interest does not wane.

The only gripe I can really find at this stage (other than child vocals *shudder*) is the production on the drums - the last album had nice, clear kicks which in fairness sounded triggered to hell, but you could tell exactly what was going on; this album follows metal's annoying trend to have the drums mixed so that the really speedy bits sound like a cat snoring. Come on, producers. Bring back the vulcan-cannon kick production of old.

This is just a minor, minor gripe in the scheme of things. Overall, I would score this album at 8/10 - it's a logical step from their last disc and has some slamming tunes. Can't go higher than 8, though. Child vocals. Don't like 'em!