Friday, September 23, 2011

Agnostic Front: Another Voice


AGNOSTIC FRONT: ANOTHER VOICE (2004)

1) Still Here; 2) All Is Not Forgotten; 3) Fall Of The Parasite; 4) Pride, Faith, Respect; 5) So Pure To Me; 6) De­di­ca­tion; 7) Peace; 8) Take Me Back; 9) Hardcore! (The Definition); 10) Casuality Of The Times; 11) I Live It; 12) It's For Life; 13) Another Voice.

Oh fuck NO. Just as these guys were almost about to turn into a marginally interesting band in the context of the new first decade, Matt «Metal God» Henderson is back, and with him, the drea­ded «crossover» sound. Even if you are in the dumb half of Agnostic Front fans, the very title of the album will remind you of One Voice — and, unless you are in the very dumb half of the dumb half of Agnostic Front fans, will teach you to steer clear of the record.

Once again, Miret is through with shouting and/or singing, and picks up the practice of, uh, let's call it expectorating. Only this time, with much cleaner and crisper production, his vocals are ne­ver lost in the metal guitar growl, and now, to quote Ian Anderson, he is «spitting out the pieces of his broken lungs» right in your face, so arm yourself with napkins a-plenty before turning on the music. I have no idea what kind of world this person must be living in if there were even two or three people who supported him on taking up this vocal approach. «Right on, Roger! Be the envy of professional wrestlers worldwide!»

The utter stupidity of the vocals is hardly helped by the fact that Matt Henderson loyally conti­nues dis-providing fresh riffs — most of the current batch seems like regurgitated old stock foo­tage, stolen out of the vaults of everybody from Sabbath to Slayer — and that I did not even no­tice any guitar solo passages whatsoever. Not that solos would have seriously helped, of course, but, in order to be at least briefly relieved of the endless, monotonous, gray-tone chugga-chugga, I would have welcomed even Yngwie Malmsteen as a guest star on a couple of tracks.

The only dubiously redeeming quality of this bunch of metalcore garbage is that the band still seems to have plenty of dedication to whatever they are doing — in fact, 'Dedication' is even the name of one of the tracks — and that they are still running high on genuine testosterone. Unfortu­nately, pure, undiluted testosterone only makes me puke. Thumbs down.


Check "Another Voice" (CD) on Amazon
Check "Another Voice" (MP3) on Amazon

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