Today, I Discovered...The Agonist

Today I Discovered...The Agonist

Ah, the 'new, regular feature'. If you've ever tried to have a regular feature of your blog, you probably know that all of a sudden you feel desperately under pressure to produce the goods...well, regularly. There were a few things I wanted to do regularly when I started this blog, 'Classic Covers' being one of theme, where I would pick the best music covers from YouTube to blog about, but a many months on and I've still only done the one so far. So, it's with a certain amount of uncertainty that I've decided to create an ad hoc feature called 'Today I Discovered...'. The idea is that anything knew I find that I love, I'll blog about, in the hope of getting my three subscribed members (at the very least) looking it up.

So, what's first?

Congratulations, Canadian Metal band The Agonist, you're the first entry!

Who?

The Agonist are a Canadian metal band who consist of Alissa White-Gluz (vocals), Danny Marino (guitar), Pascal 'Paco' Jobin (guitar), Chris Kells (bass, backing vocals) and Simon McKay (drums, percussion). Thanks for that Wikipedia. They've got, in my mind, a mix of Melodic Death Metal and Metalcore, so imagine Arch Enemy mixed with early Trivium, in no small part due to the fact that Alissa White-Gluz is the best female vocalist at growling that I've heard since Angela Gossow. As a bonus, she also has a fantastic clean vocal too.

I came across the video for Thank You Pain today (fine, last week, but I'm not about to destroy the integrity of this regular feature's title already), and it blew me away for several reasons:

1. Alissa White-Gluz's vocals, both growled and clean, immediately make you sit up and think hell is being unleashed. whilst mantaining some wonderful melodies
2. The guitars are wonderfully heavy and melodic
3. The subject matter of an accused criminal being interrogated by the prosecution in court is played wonderfully by the harsh vocals of the prosecution vs the clean vocals of the defence.

Take a look and have a listen:

I don't know about you, but I bloody love that track.

Of course, one song a great band does not make - I've checked out many other songs, and there are some fabulously melodic tunes from this band. I love a band that can sound heavy as hell, yet still bring the same emotive quality of a haunting piano piece to the table.

So, What Are You Telling Me To Do?

Listen to Thank You Pain, then go out and buy any of their (as of today) three albums. Play then loud, play them again, play them a third time, and remind yourself just how powerful the same of the female growl is, particularly when backed up by a band who can create brilliantly heavy yet wonderfully melodic at the same time.