Angolian Fromp are back and ready to PAR-DEE like Chef Boy-AR-DEE!!!!!
With the twin caveats that Vinnie Stigma seems like a nice guy and I don't want a bunch of skinheads to beat me up, I still must express disappointment in the new Agnostic Front CD. Although they've brought back the speed that was missing from Another Voice, the songs are still hampered by uneventful slow 'mosh' sections, weird vocals, and chord changes so tied to the NYHC tradition that I feel like I've heard most of them twenty times already. I'd chalk it up to my twenty ears, but then Glenn Danzig would find out and write a song about me in 1982. Don't get me started about Glenn Danzig and his time machine.
The songs are driven by a mean and heavy guitar tone (not Epitaphy-smooth), the usual group-shout choruses, and lots of top-speed hardcore drumming, but the minimalist, hardly-there riffs (up a chord, down a chord, up a chord, down a chord) and predictable fast-slow-fast arrangements wear extremely thin after a while. "Addiction" is an absolute kickass opener and "Black And Blue" pleasingly sounds a lot like late-period Ramones, but the other dozen or so tracks range from standard but inoffensive NYHC to pointless midtempo exercises in non-songwriting. And sure we all like to do some pointless midtempo exercises every once in a while to keep fit, but Glenn Danzig seems to do them everyday, which is ridiculous.
There's still a bit of nostalgic back-slapping on display ("Never forget the Lower East Side crew!"), but the lyrics as a whole seem a bit angrier than usual, with titles like "Dead To Me," "Outraged," "Revenge" and "We Want The Truth." It's kinda hard to make out what Roger's saying behind that 17-year-old bulldog vocal inflection though, so he might just be talking about old Kiss and Sham 69 albums. And sure we all like to kiss and 69 girls named Sham every once in a while, but Glenn Danz
The bottom line is this: Agnostic Front have regained their power on Warriors, but not their hooks. It's like the old joke about Glenn Danzig going fishing:
Q. Why did Glenn Danzig go fishing without any hooks?
A. Because he was fishing for compliments! (after getting knocked unconscious by a fat guy live on the Internet)
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