Anno 1997 - The Acteal Killings

Reviewing Agathocles is always a tricky thing. Seeing how many releases this band has, how many songs are on several releases and especially how many recordings were reused for different releases. You can easily skip 30% of their releases because of it.

What is most important therefor is context.
When were the songs recorded, where & how were they recorded and in which line-up.

'The Acteal Killings' (Anno 1997) is a single recording session from april 1997 at the Soundshape studios. The line featured Matty on guitar and Burt on Drums (next to obviously Jan on vocals and bass. My second favorite line-up after the one with Steve on guitar. That same year they did another long session in september for what would become their 'Humarrogance' album.

I always had some issues with 'Humarrogance' as it became too death metal orientated and the production wasn't very suiting (the guitars were way too loud for instance) especially knowing how good Agathocles could be with Matty because of the previous 'Thanks for Your Hostility' album and plenty of EP's with him out there. Sure 'Humarrogance' had enough good songs on it as well (I rated it a 77 points album for a reason) but also a lot of songs I tend to skip and I will never get used to the fucked up mix.

Back to the april 1997 session. Songs from this recordingsession were used to the split-releases with Depression, Shikabane, Malignant Tumor, Excruciating Terror, Monolith, Looking for an Answer and Abortion. So, that's 7 splits you can now remove from your list if you don't already own them (like me) and probably some reissues and split cassettes as well literally reusing songs from this recording session.

In retrospect this album exactly sounds like the missing link between 'Thanks for Your Hostility' (recorded september 1996) and Humarrogance (recorded september 1997). And it also literally is the recording session in between. And you can easily hear the 'Hostility' d-beat/grind/punk/crust vibe changing into the more eerie-meets-weird deathgrind approach of Matty's last full length album. Without going too far yet and having a good but simple in-your-face underground production.

Here were have Agathocles at the best blend of Jan & Burt doing d-beat/crust/grind combined with Matty's almost metalish quality playing and tightness. This can especially be heard on pretty perfect songs like 'Serve My Protest', 'Will To Kill' and 'Common Health'. But also the hyper tracks 'Macho Crowd', 'Get A Life', 'Just Injust' and 'Bio-Industry Fucked Up Humanity' really stand out in every way. And so do the songs with an excelling Burt on drums like 'Once Again' and 'No Remorse'. Closing up the album is 'Robotized' with its weird riffing, being an omen of their 'Humarrogance' album but much better with this production.

Is their nothing bad about this album then? Well, it's not perfect. Songs like 'Domestication' and 'Kids For Cash' have the meandering death metal feel of the Domingo era (mid 1990-mid 1991) making them unfortunately the most boring songs on the album.

In a way this album marks the end of what I would call the Golden Era of Agathocles. Starting in may 1992 and ending right here, with these recordings in april 1997. The era not only having Burt on drums but also their two best guitarist in a row (Steve and Matty) who took the band to another level. The band were on fire, performance wise and compositionally. Those 5 years the band were simply unbeatable. And this album is a true gem.