Agabas don’t fuck about.
The opening number to Hard Anger, Kjaerlighet For All, sounds like Meshuggah going head-to-head with Sepultura and, while jazzy elements do occasionally break through the dizzying assault, you’d be hard pressed to identify them except by their dental records.
However, just as you think you’ve got it sussed, the band perform a deft volte face, dipping into nimble post-hardcore territory reminiscent of Fugazi, before wrapping the whole thing up with a squealing sax solo drawn straight from Miles Davis’s nightmares.
So yeah. Um, welcome to the world of Agabas, fucker!
It gets weirder.
Follow up Jaevla Menneske, which features fellow madmen Shining, mixes the darker fringes of jazz with a blistering post-hardcore assault that savages the listener relentlessly. With electronic elements only adding to the aura of chaos, it’s an immense wall of sound that the bands unleash, but it’s not without structure and, once you get over the initial shock, you start to realise just how much thought has gone into the arrangement. More to the point, the production is such that, for all the raw ferocity the band bring to bear, there’s a clear separation that would make it a joy to listen to, were it not for the fact that there are a million things happening at once, and they’re all trying to kill you.
This is brought more firmly into focus on En Vakker Himmel, which places the jazz quotient further to the fore, the resulting track a fair approximation of what would happen if Faith No More, Ulver, and Dillinger Escape Plan conspired to have a baby.
It.
Is.
Awesome.
Perhaps concerned that it might be coming just a little too easy to follow, Agabas bow their heads and launch themselves at the full-tilt thrash of La Blodtet Flomme. Possessed of what feels like a thousand flaming riffs, it’s one of the album’s heaviest cuts, although even here, the horn section fights to break through the wall of guitars. In contrast, the proto-industrial groove of Se Det For Degi nods to Nailbomb, the brass following the descending guitar riff into an unholy maelstrom.
With Agabas clearly enjoying stamping holes in the listener’s cranium, the off-kilter jazz intro to Vis Meg Alt may come as some surprise, but then the riffs return and, if you listen carefully, you’ll hear Sondre Sørensen Brønstad give out a whoop of joy – presumably because he’s finally noticed the bodies piling up in front of the band’s overloaded amps. It’s frantic, furious fun, and it just keeps getting heavier, leading Sondre to vomit his lungs onto the studio floor at the song’s conclusion.
Undeterred, the band simply pick him up, reanimate him with some unholy (and probably fluorescent) serum and set him back to work for the sub-three-minute meltdown that is Rate. Quite where they find the energy is of some concern, but one can only assume there’s some sort of nuclear processing plant in the band’s vicinity because they hardly pause before ploughing into En Enkel Sjel. Jazzier, more expansive and, whisper it, even slightly melodic (although bear in mind that this is somewhat relative), En Enkel Sjel will certainly transform the circle pit into a cauldron of heck.
Oh yeah, and there’s an acoustic guitar in there somewhere.
The brief absence of amplification clearly caused the band some discomfort, because Arv impacts like an off-course warhead in a kitten factory. It’s big, it’s probably clever (and if it’s not, you’re certainly not going to tell Agabas that), and it briefly steals an ambient moment from a Holiday Inn lobby – I mean, at his stage in the game, why the fuck not?
Anyhow, the album’s nearly done, it’s hammering down with rain outside, and the inside of my skull is starting to feel like an ashtray that should have been emptied some six years ago. I suspect this is Agabas’ fault, because I felt fine right up to the point that I pressed play, but it’s probably not actionable. Still, it does suggest the album should come with some of health warning – forewarned is forearmed and all that.
Still, no amount of preparation will help because it’s at this point the band decide to deploy their longest song – Pa Apent Hav. Originally the grand finale, it clocks in at just over six-minutes, taking all the family-friendly aggression of the last forty minutes and blending it into a relaxing cocktail of post-metal-jazz-djent-fuckery that leaves you clinging on to the frayed shreds of your sanity. It’s sort of beautiful, in a frighteningly intense sort of way (or maybe that’s just the Stockholm Syndrome kicking in), and it draws together the threads left trailing by Botch, Cave In, Deaf Heaven, and Dillinger.
And it’s not over…
Bonus tracks
If the titles have been oblique to this point, KILL leaves little wriggle room for interpretation and, over just two-and-a-half minutes, the band attempt to do exactly that. Morke Daga is no less intense, and it grinds away at the increasingly hapless listener like a jackhammer.
How do you conclude such a monumental outpouring?
A relaxing ballad perhaps? No?
How about something devastatingly apocalyptic? Wrong again?
Ah well, it’ll be a jazz-metal-doom-sludge Black Sabbath cover then?
Yep – The Wizard is indeed a rendering of Sabbath so potent it practically gives the listener a contact high. It’s gloriously heavy, wonderfully mischievous, and it provides this expanded version of the album with the perfect ending you never knew it needed.
So, that’s it. The album is over. I’m exhausted and Agabas are awesome.
Um. I’m too tired to tell you anymore. Buy this album before they find you… 10/10
