Artist: Agnostic
Album: Morbid Embracement
Label: Self-released
Release Date: January 2012
“Slicing through the flesh
A knife stuck in your neck
Stabbing out your eyes
Cutting through the spine
Blood burning through my veins
We have risen from the grave”
- ‘The Bleeding’ by Cannibal Corpse
Brutality has always been the favourite topic of death metal artists right from 1988, the year of formation of Cannibal Corpse. Right from blood gushed album artworks to lyrics about shredded muscle tissues, severed oesophagus and blood ejaculating penises, such bands have appeared gross to some, funny to others while people like me have become so accustomed to these things that they appear normal to us. Hailing from Guwahati, Assam, Agnostic is one such death metal band formed in 2009. Although they don’t have any blood spattered cover art, but their lyrical themes are all about gore, torture and mutilation.
Their music is loaded with guttural vocals, pulsing guitar riffs, ear-splitting solos and insane drumlines, a sound which many Indian death metal fans long to witness live. They did get a chance to perform in the huge Indian Metal Festival but their set was cancelled due to mismanagement by the organizers. With Deep ‘Butcher’ on vocals, Hemen ‘Butcher’ on guitars, David Das on guitars and backing vocals, Nitu Saikia on bass and Mitul Boro on drums, Agnostic released their debut album last year in January titled, ‘Morbid Embracement’.
The album is a very good effort by the band as they tried to bring back the early 90s’ brutal death metal sound here, which is very reminiscent of Cannibal Corpse. The tracks have a nice amount of flow as they gallop from one riff to another with brilliantly tailored bridges. We can witness skull –pounding lapses of chugging riffs in the tracks, ‘Psychotic Mission Of Death’, ‘One Final Mutilation’ and ‘Maggot Infest’ along with downright dominating blast beats in ‘Submerge In Gore’ and ‘Blood Ridden Epitaph’. Though there isn’t much variety being offered here in the album, ‘Acrisia’ and ‘Blood Ridden Epitaph’ are kickass tracks with groove laden thrashy progressions.
One cannot help but notice the obvious resemblance of the mid tempo melody on the verse of the title track, ‘Morbid Embracement’ with the chorus on ‘Hammer Smashed Face’ by Cannibal Corpse. All the tracks on the album have an awesome guttural feeling and get you straight to headbanging and moshing on the insane blast beats. The album ends with a peculiar track, titled ‘Beneath The Frozen Depth’, consisting of growled vocals on clean grungy chords and arpeggios; its ambience toggles between a dark black metal atmosphere and gloominess of a 90s grunge song.
The work on guitars has been really good throughout the album. Apart from slaughtering machine gun riffs and mindboggling chugs, the album offers some good solos with nice amount shredding in the songs ‘Morbid Embracement’ and ‘Submerge In Gore’. Check out the whammy solo on ‘Psychotic Mission Of Death’ and the melodic leads on ‘Blood Ridden Epitaph’. We can witness some insane drumming throughout the album. Mitul has demonstrated brilliant amount of footwork and mosh-summoning blast beats to go with the high tempo tracks. The vocals on the album are good but would do better with more amount of power in them.
The production of the album is excellent for a debutant. The instruments have been panned aptly and the songs have nice amount of dynamics, kudos to the engineer. I don’t know about live performances, but the band sounds pretty tight on the record. The only downside of the album is that these people have nothing new on the table. Surely, we all loved their music and cherished them for preserving the cult death metal sound but somewhere down the alley, I feel that the compositions require more innovation and with such a potential, they could do much better.
Summing up, the album is vicious and recommended for all types of heavy listeners. We look forward to another maggot filled release from the band.
Like Agnostic on Facebook: www.facebook.com/Agnostic.mb
Listen to the band on ReverbNation: www.reverbnation.com/agnosticindia
