Humarrogance

Most notable difference with predecessor “Thanks For You Hostility” is the decreased influence of hardcore punk and the increasing amount death metal riffs. Possibly this is because of guitarist Matty, for on the previous album with Matty, a lot of the hardcore punk songs were actually written in an earlier period when Steve was in the band. So it is possible we’re (finally) dealing with the true musical influence of Matty here but keeping in mind for instance their cult split EP with Vomit Fall one knows Matty can execute crustcore perfectly.

Unfortunately the death metal side of Agathocles had proved to be the least interesting one few years earlier. Remember their period with Domingo on guitar and their debut album “Theatric Symbolisation Of Life” when a lot of their material was quite bland and over stretched? Matty really shows off the need to be more than a regular crustcore/grindcore guitarist. Just check out “Let’s Feel Alright” and “As Years Pass by”. His riffing really stands out and works nicely on tracks like “One-Day-Fly”, "Beam Me Up Scotty", "Mincecore" or "Smelling The Odours Of Death" referring to the early days of death metal with bands like Morbid Angel and even some riffs which have a Cannibal Corpse feeling ("Culture Of Degradation").

Also worth mentioning is "Ain't I" which has a certain early Macabre touch to it. However the excessive riffing on a song like "Ice Brick" becomes too much of a good thing and the song drowns in sounds and riffs and loses character. Also, what's the point of "Failure" which, apart from the grindcore eruption at the end, is nothing more than a few minutes of a sampled voices and screaming guitars?

The two songs "Let's feel Alright" and " Alright, Let's feel" are is essence the same song but played without distortion the second time. Also enjoyable is the happy groovy track “White Horse” and one wishes the band would have tried more of these excessive experiments on this album. The back-to-the-roots approach works very good on songs like "Because" and "It Bothers Me". Matty plays these songs with ease and adds a little of his own personal touch to them. On "Model Citizen" and "As Years Pass By" drummer Burt gives the sound and extra dimension by playing different rhythms or having some refreshing breaks.

A productional flaw, but to be honest also a compositional one, are the vocals. They are buried in the mix, at times have too much effects over them and because of the foggy sound of the bassguitar and guitar, they almost disappear at certain points or become one with the racket. This is a shame and makes the album sound more sloppy than it actually is. Also the vocal performance isn’t quite up to normal standards of quality. The use of pitch shifted gargling is over-used and the straight forward grunt of Jan is dearly missed. It's because of the vocal performance and production songs like "Closed Down" and "Kneel and Pray" are missing something.

“Humarrogance” is a decent Agathocles album and holds some really excellent songs. Compared to the previous three full length albums it is somewhat lacking in terms of agression, effeciency, vocals and production but the death metal approach works a lot better this time than on "Theatric Symbolisation Of Life".