AGONY

'Agony' is the second studio album by Italian symphonic death metal band Fleshgod Apocalypse, released in 2011 through fames German record label Nuclear Blast, and generally expanding upon the stylistic pursuits of earlier releases by the band originally coming from the city of Perugia. Bookmarked by shorter instrumental opening and closing pieces, there are eight songs in total making up the contents of this rather messy work, blending together the two seemingly opposite worlds of symphonic music and brutal death metal, an amalgamation of genres that is incredibly difficult to pull off, with some bands succeeding at it being Greek act Septicflesh and Finnish band Children of Bodom. Unfortunately, 'Agony', amidst all of the praise received over the years, is an album that is as unlistenable as it is bold and ambitious.

Generally consisting of fast-paced death metal songs with orchestral samples running in the background, the guitar riffs are hardly discernible in the final mix, and the listener might have severe difficulty in unearthing any of them, completely lost among the unnecessary and overblown use of symphonic elements and the scorchingly fast drumming (the overusing of blast beats does not help either), mechanical and all over the place, completely lacking any liveliness or musicality. Just crass and insensitive heaviness prevailing all over the place, hardly working together with the orchestral samples, ultimately hindered even further by the weak vocals, and this goes both for the harsh death metal growls (not particularly noteworthy in the context of the genre), and for the high-pitched semi-operatic clean vocals, entirely below par and uninteresting. Don't get me wrong, all the elements of a fine symphonic death metal album seem to be there, it is just that the execution of it all that is really poor, with most of the songs being virtually buried under the overtones of tremolo-picked guitars strumming that one chord, the indulgent use of orchestration and the extremely fast-paced drums, produced rather artificially. Still, among all the critical aspects, songs like 'The Deceit', 'The Egoism', and the title track, manage to present a better view of the aims of this record, butchered by the overall approach of the band and their production team.

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