Oklahoma’s The Agony Scene is in dire need of some therapy, because they have a considerable personality crisis. First, on their 2003 self titled debut, they unleashed a promising, Darkest Hour-ish, blackened form of Euro-death laced metalcore, then on 2005’s The Darkest Red, they went commercial metalcore with clean vocals and catchy choruses. So now, what will Get Damned give us?
Well this time apparently we have some American Metal.
(Large) Part thrash, part hardcore, part metalcore, all predictable, The Agony Scene have basically mixed their first two albums into one by the numbers standard American metal album, that while has a few solid moments is largely forgettable and could see the band fade into obscurity due to their continual style shifts.
Even with a chunky, earthy Tue Madsen –ish sounding production and an overall approach that will be overly familiar to anyone that’s heard Killswitch Engage, All That Remains, God Forbid et all (and to these ears Germany’s Fear My Thoughts with a dash of mid era Poison the Well), the material on Get Damned barely has a pulse and is just ‘there’. There’s some solid moments of up tempo thrashing riffage such as “Adversary”, “Rapture”, “Rattle me Bones” and “The Will to Bleed”, but on the whole, the tracks end up being a well produced, glossy eleven tracks of acceptable but rather bland ‘meh’ (“Deliverance” , “White Nights”, “The Opposition”).
The only glaring positive is closing track, “Old Scratch” which pulls out just a killer riff and clean chorus out of nowhere, showing The Agony Scene have some ability tucked away somewhere amid the trend hopping, but I doubt we will hear much more from them after this.
