The Agonist report back to their fan base with the new record ‘Five’. The second album with the new singer Vicky Psarakis will be released on 30th September.
The record starts with mysterious synthesizers in “The Moment”. A mid-speed groovy riff accompanies the next part followed by a powerful and broad chorus. The arrangements and the other parts of this opener gave the record a very fine beginning. The next track “The Chain” is faster and playful. The darker voice of Vicky merge with the guitars and drums perfectly. Crowd shouts can be heard in the powerful chorus with wonderful singing lines -a nice tracks for live performances! “The Anchor and the Sail” continues the speed and power of the album. The verses build up a powerful atmosphere with catchy riffs, appropriate lead guitars and mind blowing singing. A straight, but catchy riff starts the next song “The Game”. It leads into an awesome chorus with a wonderful vocal line and some arrangements with synthesizers and guitar effects which give the track a lot of potential.
Playful interplay between all instruments can be heard in “The Ocean”. The track embodies a good mood and is kind of straight, but porcupined with interesting parts in the song structure. “The Hunt” starts with the same mood, but gets a bit heavier and has a wonderful chorus again. The heavier part of the records take a break with the beautiful ballad “The Raven Eyes”. I like the multiple voice arrangements in there. “The Wake” interlude with an epic orchestral track, moves into the next song “The Resurrection”. This track blows my mind, because it starts with double bass thunder and blackened riffs of the guitars. This song is kind of interesting overall: Vicky sing some mad lines and the instruments run crazy with some shifted accents, too. It’s a bit different in respect to the other stuff and maybe not the best, but is the most interesting track so far.
I was wide-eyed at the start of the next song, “The Villian”. It builds up to a mad mixture of blast beats and crazy lines of Vicky. The rest of the song is a good, balanced mixture of heaviness, awesome interplay of the guitars and fine choruses. Definitely an interesting song! “The Pursuit of Emptiness” continues the friskiness with some hypnotic parts, and the next song “The Man Who Fell to Earth” is the most hypnotic track in my opinion and I liked the acoustic parts with the screamed voices in there. The last song “The Trial” is sweeping and catchy like the first few songs of the record. There exist some interesting shifted accents again, a straight, heavy mid part and ends up in the last awesome chorus of the album. As a bonus track, The Agonist cover “Take Me to Church” from Hozier with their own fine interpretation.
I like the arrangements with different guitar effects and synthesizers which build up atmosphere in the songs. I discovered many details inside the songs which are well-mixed into the whole record. I’ve nothing to complain about the sound of the record except the guitar sound. It could be a bit heavier and less dry in my opinion, but it may be the concept behind it because of the arrangements of the background, which steal some heaviness on the songs.
The new record ‘Five’ of The Agonist is a bit different than the previous ones. It is less heavy or brutal, but it is a very nice, elaborated concept album. It contains straightforward songs as well as heavy tracks which will be crazy live on stage and also a beautiful ballad. The band presented their fine ability for song writing and Vicky Psarakis shows her powerful voice. The mixture of the voice, instrumental parts and the mass of arrangements make this album a very solid one. I really like the style of the record and I’m curious about the band in the future!
