Agoraphobic Nosebleed
Arc


4.0
excellent

Review

by BurntSynapse USER (20 Reviews)
January 25th, 2016 | 35 replies


Release Date: 2016 | Tracklist

Review Summary: ANb unleash their EP of misanthropic, sludgy doom.

It’s been a long and relatively silent road to travel before reaching the first of four Agoraphobic Nosebleed EPs. Having been announced back in late 2012, Agoraphobic released inklings of details in regards to each members’ specific album. The design of these EPs is to allow each band member to write their own lyrics and drive the musical style of the album, though the trajectory of the respective releases remained uncertain. Enter Arc, vocalist Kat Katz’s doom-laden EP treading the heavy musical domain heretofore unexplored by the band. Marked with her signature guttural howl, Katz brings forth Agoraphobic’s versatility in composing songs which are a far cry from the catastrophic, bloody onslaught of machine gunning drums listener’s would generally anticipate from the grind outfit.

Arc opens with "Not a Daughter", the shortest yet most delectable song, containing a plethora of head banging, crunching riffs. Its momentum steam rolls from one catchy riff to the next as the thick muddy bass buzzes tightly with pounding drums behind shrieks of afflicted malignant abuse. "Deathbed" plods with a leaden stride before erupting with an infectious hook to bring the song to a rocking tempo, whereas the album closer, "Gnaw", broods in sludgy darkness, never rising from its gloomy tone. Agoraphobic Nosebleed have produced a short and sweet EP which showcases their experimental capabilities. Despite its brevity, they have illuminated a darker shade of an evolving sound which does not require the ridiculous pummeling assault of blast beats. Katz’s crushing vocals and the groovy head banging riffs interspersed throughout the misanthropic doom warrant for repeated spins of Arc, at least until their new EP is unleashed.



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user ratings (117)
3.6
great


Comments:Add a Comment 
BurntSynapse
January 25th 2016


132 Comments

Album Rating: 4.0

Any comments and/or criticism are most certainly welcome. I would also love to hear your thoughts on the album as whole, as this is new territory for ANb! :]

Angelboros
January 25th 2016


1357 Comments

Album Rating: 4.0 | Sound Off

Deathbed is so tasty. It grooves for days, man.

BurntSynapse
January 25th 2016


132 Comments

Album Rating: 4.0

Hell yes! I enjoyed the heck out of Not A Daughter just because of the almost non-stop head banging riffs, but Deathbed has grown to be probably my favorite of the three. I need to keep listening to it :]

Nikkolae
January 25th 2016


6679 Comments

Album Rating: 3.5

awesome ep, makes me wish Salome was still a thing ) :

Essence
January 25th 2016


6694 Comments


didn't really dig this when i heard it, but solid review nonetheless

Essence
January 25th 2016


6694 Comments


xeno your soundoff has to be at least 50 characters

zaruyache
January 25th 2016


27451 Comments

Album Rating: 3.0

I think her vocals get a little old since they're the same type of screams the whole way though (they work better with faster stuff), but this has a nice Sabbathy groove to it.

Essence
January 25th 2016


6694 Comments


the vibe i got from this was, some weekend a few months ago, scott called up kat and said 'hey want to make some music' and they wrote a couple of ideas in 1 weekend and, here we are

zaruyache
January 25th 2016


27451 Comments

Album Rating: 3.0

I casually jammed it from the speaker on my phone and it did sound disjointed; like they mostly just took catchy Sabbath riffs and stuck them together

BurntSynapse
January 26th 2016


132 Comments

Album Rating: 4.0

Thank you, Essence, I very much appreciate it :]



Also, thank you to whomever featured this review :D

ScuroFantasma
Emeritus
January 26th 2016


12039 Comments


Decent review, you don't say a lot about the music itself and when you do its a quasi-track by track but then again the intro was interesting and probably more conceptually important. Will check.

Artuma
January 26th 2016


32773 Comments

Album Rating: 3.0

decent stuff. doesn't hold a candle to salome though

BurntSynapse
January 26th 2016


132 Comments

Album Rating: 4.0

Hi ScuroFantasma, thank you for the criticism :] What would you recommend as opposed to my approach? Do you think it would have been better to maybe describe the music and use a song to provide an example as opposed to just describing each individual track? My original reason for writing the song-by-song descriptors is that there are only three tracks, so I tried to keep the discussion concise. That being said, I'm interested in what you would have done differently. Thank you again for the criticism, I appreciate it as it's very helpful for me :]

Comatorium.
January 26th 2016


5062 Comments


this is some solid shit. i want salome back though

Mort.
January 26th 2016


25386 Comments


Grind bands playing doom sees really weird to me

BurntSynapse
January 26th 2016


132 Comments

Album Rating: 4.0

I agree, I too think a grind band playing doom is weird (except for Clinging to the Trees of a Forest Fire, who do a nice mix of both grind and doom in their songs), but I find it intriguing and I appreciate the attempt at diversifying the sound. I also think another reason why ANb is doing this wildly different take on genres is to push the band into more "genre-less" territory, more or less.



The remaining three EPs are supposedly going to be: (1) MOD or Gang Green influenced, (2) Godflesh, (3) Prog, so it should be fun!

Artuma
January 26th 2016


32773 Comments

Album Rating: 3.0

looking forward to the godfleshy one

BurntSynapse
January 26th 2016


132 Comments

Album Rating: 4.0

Me too! I just hope we don't have to wait another three or four years to hear the next EP. Maybe the release of Arc will get the ball rolling for the others.

ScuroFantasma
Emeritus
January 27th 2016


12039 Comments


@Burnt - I just generally prefer sonic information to be a larger part of reviews than background information, though I just re-read this one and you actually did do an excellent job of the whole thing, so I take back my previous comment. Especially now that I know it's only 3 tracks long, I thought you were just picking random tracks to talk about at the expense of the 'whole album'.

This is super well-written btw.

osteporosis
August 19th 2016


562 Comments


ahhh this is awesome



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