D.M's Best Albums of 2019

My statements at the head of this will be brief this year, because I think a lot of these albums speak for themselves.  As usual, we begin with a recitation of the rules – original studio albums only.  No compilations, no re-releases, no live albums, no cover albums.  And, as ever, my list goes to 11.

I think I will say only this – I love and would defend all these records against naysayers of any stripe, but I find myself wishing that more bands I didn’t already know had made the final cut this year.  I suppose it’s something that there are three or four bands who have never the cut of my top ten before, but that’s a small consolation.  I’m fearful that the drought of new names is because I’m in my middle thirties and I’m subconsciously rejecting things are new and different.  More optimistically, and this is what I’m telling myself, I’m hoping the lack of new bands is a signal of two things – one, that several resurgences and comebacks were truly, unequivocally excellent, and second, that maybe as Chris C and I discussed, it was a slightly down year.

In the end, there were sixteen finalists.  To get the final roster down to the necessary eleven players (and one honorable mention,) four worthy albums got left in the lurch.  I have commemorated them below, and I parenthetically feel a little bad for Toothgrinder, as both of their last two albums fell just short.

And so I leave you with this list, one man’s humble opinion of the musical year that was.  Good luck and godspeed.

Others Receiving Votes:
Deathchant – Deathchant
Lord Vapour – Semuta
Death Angel – Humanicide
Toothgrinder – I Am

Honorable Mention - While She Sleeps - So What?

Every year there’s an album that populates my list because it simply overwhelms with power and reminds me of the heady days of my youth, when thunderous alt metal ruled the roost and Rob Zombie had spawned a legion of soundalikes and also-rans.  That’s where While She Sleeps make their headway, and they’ve gone and combined it with a twist of layered songwriting to add some depth.

11 - A Pale Horse Named Death - When the World Becomes Undone

This album absolutely deserves to be here, but I feel a little torn about starting with it, only because it’s hard to get excited about the year’s records when the list starts with the most depressing one.  Many of the bands born from the ashes of Type O Negative have failed to really hit home (Seventh Void and Silvertomb being two of them,) but APHND has something.  They’re both the closest spiritual successor to Type O and the most adept at carrying the spark of that band’s infectious songwriting.  The primary difference is that APNHD generally lacks Type O’s tongue in cheek humor, instead focusing on the darkness of a world gone mad.  Cue up the slow dirges, it’s a long, enjoyable ride.

10 - John Garcia - John Garcia & The Band of Gold

Speaking of artists who have it, John Garcia has it.  I admit I’m eating a little crow here – if you had asked me who the member of Kyuss was who was destined to succeed as a solo act, I don’t know that I would have picked John.  But there’s something about his dry, slow-burning band that’s clean and pure and infectious.  Who knows if Vista Chino will end up being a one-off or not, but in the meantime, John Garcia is capably carrying the torch for desert rock.

9 - Devil to Pay - Forever, Never or Whenever

Nothing is more frustrating than a band from the underground who isn’t getting nearly the publicity or exposure they deserve.  Overseas, that band is Red Eleven and in the good old continental United States, it’s Devil to Pay.  Darlings of the metal scene in the Midwest, these crusaders for sludge from Indianapolis have been putting out one killer album after another since 2004’s Thirty Pieces of Silver.  Fifteen years later, they’ve lost none of their steam and can spin out a killer riff at a moment’s notice.  Get on the bandwagon, already.

8 - Children of Bodom - Hexed

It’s weird to think of Children of Bodom as elder statesmen, but at this point that’s where we are.  They’ve taken a lot of twists and turns in their sound over the years, and Hexed is the natural evolution of their sound into a whole new phase.  It’s not easy to write accessible and catchy death metal, but they’re figured out the formula and are better off for it.  The news that three core members of the band are departing in December comes as a shock – particularly amidst the persistent rumor that the band’s name may have to change as a result.  If this be the end of Children of Bodom as we know it, it’s a fine effort to go out on.

7 - BRKN LOVE - BRKN LOVE

And finally, we get to a band making their debut this year.  2019 was light on new acts who truly impressed, but these Canadians can bring it.  To some extent, this album feels like a long EP more than a true album, but it’s still groovy and dire and heavy in all the right places.  BRKN LOVE wears all their influences in plain sight, and that’s just fine, because they’re drawing on great material.  I don’t know that I’ve had this much fun being introduced to a new band in this stripe since Wolfmother.

6- John 5 & The Creatures - Invasion

John 5 should no longer just be known as the guitarist for Rob Zombie and former guitarist for Marilyn Manson.  He’s a musician unto his own right now, and the fact that Zombie allows him time and space on stage to touch ever so slightly on his solo pieces is sufficient testament to that fact.  What separates John 5 from every other guitar virtuoso is that, and this sounds facile even as I say it but it’s true, he’s writing actual songs and telling stories, not just showing how many arpeggios he can play in thirty seconds (though he leaves plenty of space for that, too.)

5 - Combichrist - One Fire

Nobody is happier about the recent Industrial Revolution than me.  Suddenly the genre is undergoing a huge comeback, and the big beats, cranked gain and scorched sounds are welcome in my ears any time.  Combichrist has taken a lot of turns to make their sound more metal and less abstractly industrial, and I dare say they get better with every album.  One Fire is a great listen for when you’re mad at the world.  Or working out.  Or playing sports.  Or doing dishes.  Or whatever damn time you want to listen to it.

4 - Life of Agony - The Sound of Scars

I wrote in great detail during my full review of this album why I’m conflicted about it.  I won’t rake you all over the details again, but know that it’s because I’m not sure if I love this album because of what it is, or because it represents something that used to be.  In any event, I’m quite certain the fault, if there is one, is with me, and not with the album.  There are piled of bands out there who have tried to ape this sound in the past twenty years and fallen completely on their faces in the process.  As a result, the door is open for Life of Agony to come marching in and teach a master class on the subject.

3 - Indestructible Noise Command - Terrible Things

The comeback is complete! INC now has more albums post-hiatus than pre-hiatus, and they appear to be here to stay (do some touring already, would you?)  This album is an old-school thrash masterpiece, brimming with attitude and big riffs and speedspeedspeed.  The band got away from the Pantera sound that had colored their other two recent albums (which I use only as a recognizable standard – INC predates Pantera and the intertwined history of the two bands is well documented,) and returned to the pure core of thrash from which they were born, to great effect.

2 - Royal Republic - Club Majesty

This album is fucking magnificent.  It’s probably the album on this list that I go back and listen to the most.  It’s a delicious blend of disco, rock and pure sleaze, molded together over cheap cocktails and sardonic songwriting.  There’s only one thing that keeps this record from the top spot, and it’s that you have to be in the right mood to listen to it.  The album lives right on the edge between sassy, over-the-top rock excess and completely and totally annoying.  It plays that line to perfection, but boy, if you come into it with the wrong state of mind…..but don’t get me wrong.  This is album #2 for a reason.

1 - Destrage - The Chosen One

I feel bad about this only because some might think I’m starting to show favoritism.  Including this one, Destrage’s last three albums have finished 1, 1 and 2 in my end of year rankings (and Are You Kidding Me? No. could still make a case for number 1 over Red Eleven’s Round II.)  Like all Destrage albums, this one grew me on over time.  When it released in May, I thought it was good, but not as strong as the prior two.  And then it wore on me.  And wore on me.  And for reasons I couldn’t understand, I just kept going back to it over and over again.  Slowly it became a constant companion on road trips and when travelling for work.  So, it’s hard not to think that some of this placement is based on the luck of timing – if it had released in October, I don’t know that I would have had enough time with it.  There’s something about this band, though – they write lyrics way past the margin, bend their idiom for riffs that barely make sense and reach outside the comfort zone of genre to craft huge choruses and songs that are too irresistible to be denied.  The Chosen One does nothing but continue the band’s dominance.

Album Review: Life of Agony - "The Sound of Scars"

We’re going to commit a cardinal sin of editorial review writing, and give away the verdict early.  “The Sound of Scars,” the new album from Life of Agony and sequel to the all-time classic “River Runs Red” is a laudable achievement and an excellent listen, well worth the time of old fans, and a fantastic invitation to a genre left for dead by many new fans.

The textbook says not to do what we just did, but we’re about to go fairly deep into the reeds, and we needed the context of the verdict to provide some stable ground.

And now I’ll commit a second cardinal sin of reviewing, which is to inject myself into the proceedings.

I am having a hell of a time trying to assess this album properly.  It’s not that I didn’t want a sequel to “River Runs Red,” it’s that I never expected one – and the fact that the band is expressly promoting the album as such makes it hard to know by what standard the album should be judged; is this a relic of the past and times gone by, or is this the beginning of a resurgence by one of the best innovators in the class?

Certainly, with all the band has been through, and with society’s increased focus on issues of mental health, a sequel was in the cards.  If we can speak plainly, no one is better equipped in the metal community than Life of Agony to represent the sum total of those issues in a way that is both responsible and appropriate.  As a quick aside and without going into the gory details, I’m glad they did – I’ve been presented with my own (comparatively minor) mental health issues over the past couple years, and the subject needs as much spotlight as it can get.

As we said at the top, I like this album.  A lot.  We’ll get into the minutiae in a minute, but the point that needs to be addressed is that there’s an inexorable phantasmagoria involved with this album.  The close association to “River Runs Red” means that the memories of that record get mixed up in the interpretation of this one and it becomes a difficult mental exercise to separate the two.  It’s like when you’re talking to your parents and your brain fills in the image of them from your childhood, but then you see a picture of them without context and realize that they have in fact gotten older.

Which only becomes complicated because of the following point – I like “The Sound of Scars” a lot, but I don’t entirely know why.  The album hits all the right notes (pun intended,) and the songwriting strays back to the edgy and dangerous origin of the band, even more than their previous effort, “A Place Where There’s No More Pain.”  For all that, there is a certain lack of musical innovation here; the album doesn’t feel very ‘new,’ and so I’m forced to wonder if I enjoy this record so much because of its own merits, or as an exercise in nostalgia.  I have led myself to believe it’s the former, and I hope against hope I’m right, for as frequent visitors to this website will note, the latter would make me an unholy hypocrite.

As a second point, there will be some question as to whether this album impacts the legacy of “River Runs Red.”  Part of the power and emotional effectiveness of that album was the no-nonsense recognition of the pain and struggle of the protagonist, ending with his lamentable suicide.  If only someone had reached out to him, or if only he had known there were like-minded people out in his world….

To discover in the early going of this new effort that he survives doesn’t necessarily tarnish that impact, but it could alter its interpretation.  This new album sees the same character grow and struggle and strive all over again, this time ending with a glimmer of hope that both appreciates and respects his troubled journey and gives him the chance to thrive as he goes forward.  In the new millennium maybe that’s the message we most need to hear, and I hope that for fans this doesn’t diminish the weight of “River Runs Red,” but there will be an argument that it could (I can see it now: ‘well, the dude lives, so everything’s okay, right?’ Which is infantile in its simplicity and dismisses the point entirely,) and my fear is that the more stubborn among us will cling to what was rather than grasp what could be (which is, in itself, a theme of the album.)  Remember, people; you probably know someone who is struggling.  They may not show it, and they may not even really know it.  But it’s serious.  Check in on the people around you.  It makes a difference.

Anyway, the record.  What’s novel is that no one writes songs like this anymore, and so perhaps what’s ‘new’ is actually a continuation that has laid dormant for too long.  Somewhere in winding path that’s become metal, we lost the ability to write sharp, spiky melodies and still have them be melodies.  Life of Agony was among the best at this in the first place, and they don’t disappoint here, with the infectiously rhythmic “Scars” leading off the album.

There are many bands who would have attempted and failed to write “Black Heart,” the album’s second real cut, for they could not have balanced it so well on the precipice between heavy and anthemic.  There are those uneducated or naïve metal fans who will smear “The Sound of Scars” for sitting in the middle of these two styles, but those fans are fools.  Superior songwriting will carry the day in any genre, and metal is no exception.  The vacillation between the heavy beat and the accenting guitar is a nuance that would be lost in many cases, but makes for great composition here.

While many will point to the shadow of “River Runs Red” that colors the songwriting of “The Sound of Scars,” there are many other bands that can be faintly heard here, through intention or accident.  “Lay Down” bears the hallmarks of both Rage Against the Machine’s “Vietnow” and Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” while still sounding intrinsically like an LoA original.

In a moment of levity, the first fourteen seconds of “Eliminate” are almost identical to the first fourteen seconds of The Bouncing Souls’ “Manthem,” to the point that I had to do a double check to make sure it wasn’t a cover I had missed.  Seriously, pull up both songs and take a listen.  (Unnecessary tangent – “Manthem” appears on TBS’ “How I Spent My Summer Vacation,” which to me, is still the greatest pop punk album ever written, and it’s not close.)

Where we hit the meat of the album is in the middle, with “Empty Hole” and “My Way Out.”  This is where “The Sound of Scars” shines brightest, as Life of Agony best displays their unique blend of rock, punk and metal to glorious consequence, bending all three genres into an inseparable weave that makes for two powerful songs paired with strong lyrical messages.

Two and a half years ago, I wrote about “A Place Where There’s No More Pain” and said this: “…the message remains the same as it was almost a quarter century ago.  Life is hard, it can be unfair, mistakes are made, and somewhere, buried down at the bottom…[is] the knowledge that you’re not alone.  It’s a message that has become Life of Agony’s stock in trade (and how could it not, just look at the band’s name,) and it is where their music is the most comfortable.”

That remains emphatically true for “The Sound of Scars,” and that’s what both continues to fuel the band and makes this an album not to be missed.

Here It Is - The Top Albums of 2017

Another year, another chance to partake in our society’s two favored pastimes – the ranking of things, and the arbitrary judgment of subjective arts.  That being said, let me of course follow with the usual tongue-in-cheek rigmarole about how this list is the definitive list of all the lists you will read, blah, blah, blah.  Oh, and Chris’ list is right, too.  How does that work, when we don’t have a single album in common?  The answer is, it’s our blog.

In all honesty, perhaps more this year than in year’s previous, what I bring to you should not necessarily be taken as unmolested gospel for the best albums of the year.  What you, gentle reader, should glean from this is that these are what I thought to be the best records of the year, and I firmly believe that they are worth your time and exploration.  You may or may not agree with my choices, but let’s have that conversation, and the only way for us to start that conversation is for one of us to make a statement.  Therefore, this is my statement.

The rules, as frequent readers have come to know them, are brief and as follows: all entries must be original studio material.  No live albums.  No compilations.  No cover albums.  No re-releases.  Oh, and I do a top 11, because, say it with me now, it goes to eleven.  That’s pretty much it.  Without further preamble, let’s get to it:

EP of the year: Charcoal Tongue – “24 Hours: My Deterioration”

I’m taking a page from Chris’ book here and declaring and EP of the year, because there were a number of them worth mentioning, and it doesn’t always feel fair to judge an EP against a full album.  Unless that EP is Nine Inch Nails’ “Broken,” it’s hard to go up against records of full sample size.  But that by no means lessens the quality of Charcoal Tongue’s effort, which is very raw but full of promise, as they send out cascades of rock and metal at full bore into your speakers.

Honorable Mention – Serenity - “Lionheart”

Listen, I don’t want to sound all pompous, but I often feel like I’m ‘done’ with power metal as a genre.  Like, most of the bands sound similar to me, the records are similar, and the songs all follow the same progressions and arcs.  Don’t get me wrong, there are many I hold dear, but more often than not, I hear a new power metal record and I shrug and go on about my business.  Serenity’s “Lionheart,” managed to grip my attention several times, and each time I thought I knew what was going to happen next, the band would mix in some new, powerful riff that snapped me right back to attention.

#11 – Life of Agony – “A Place Where There’s No More Pain”

This album is here because of what it is, but also because of what it represents.  From a musical standpoint, it’s a more mature, careful Life of Agony, but that brings it with it a new paradigm, a pleasant shift from the fury of their youth.  It’s well designed and expertly executed.  It also represents the accomplishment, at least in part, of a marginalized segment of the population.  At the risk of making a political stand, no one should be marginalized because of who they are.  There’s a lot of that going around, and it needs to stop.

#10 – ELM – “Dog”

Every year, there’s an album that cracks my list because it throws all the rules of style and convention forcefully out the nearest airlock, and plays music solely based in grit, piss and vinegar.  And for all the artistic vision of the other albums on this list, ELM sits here proudly in blatant defiance of that.  Their record is noisy, overdriven, disorganized, and a pure joy to listen to.  The music is so fuzzy it makes you feel like you’re chewing on a mitten.  And I love it.

#9 – Dead Quiet – “Grand Rites”

In stark contrast to the comparative miasma of ELM up above, Dead Quiet’s “Grand Rites” is a slow-burning, trippy, rising tide of music that gradually consumes your senses with its weird but infectious combinations of drawn-out harmonies, rocking melodies and authentic vocals.  Don’t ask me to put my finger on exactly why I like this album, just know that I do.

#8 – The One Hundred – “Chaos + Bliss”

And we’ve officially hit the first album that requires some specific punctuation if you want to google the title.  I honestly don’t know if rap metal will ever make a comeback, but if it does, this could well be the form it will take.  The One Hundred do an excellent job of combining some of the tenets of that genre with a more mainline take on alternative metal, and a healthy dose of hardcore thus mixing three sounds ranging between forgotten and stale into something new and novel.  The creativity and dare I say bravery of this effort lands it in this spot.

#7 – Ember Falls – “Welcome to Ember Falls”

We’ve talked about this a lot through the years, but one of the private and unexpected joys of being a music journalist is those rare occasions when you find something that’s different.  In some ways, this is superior to even finding an album you really like.  This album came out early in the year, and every time I thought about if I had a totally unique listening experience this year, my brain returned to Ember Falls.  Not only is this a quirky record with a lot of different genre mixing and oddly matched cadences, but it’s actually fun to listen to, which separates it from the crowd of albums that want to be different just to be different.

#6 – “Galaktikon II: Become the Storm”

It’s not quite Galaktikon, and it’s not quite Dethklok.  It is, in fact, an amalgam of both, equally representing Brendon Small’s ability to be melodic and forceful in his musical explorations.  There’s probably not a lot I can say here that you at home don’t already know.  This is a great record, and it still strikes me as interesting that one of the year’s best metal albums came from a guy who isn’t necessarily part of the inner metal circle.  There’s a lesson there, to be sure.

#5 – Power Trip – “Nightmare Logic”

The one great thrash record of the year was a really great thrash record.  These upstarts from Texas exercised all the right lessons when constructing this album – great riffs, lot of open space to let them breathe, percussion that has an accurate sense of when to push the pedal and when to lay off.  In a year where thrash spun rather in circles and couldn’t get out of its own way, Power Trip took the flag and ran with it.

#4 – Troubled Horse – “Revolution on Repeat”

I think I finally have this album properly rated.  When I first heard it, it passed by me without much though, but by some Providence, I kept coming back to it.  I spent a month in Waco, Texas one week this summer, and this album was a frequent companion on my travels and travails.  Now that we’ve settled into the winter, I think this is where the record fits in the grand scheme.  Rock fans will love it; it’s loud, it’s tight and the message is on point.  If Graveyard wasn’t going to release an album this year, this is the next best thing.

#3 – Nachtblut – “Apostasie”

And now we come to what might be the most ‘fun’ album of the year.  Which is odd only because so much of the record’s imagery lingers around skulls, darkness and bodies painted black.  I don’t know, maybe I’m reading it wrong; I don’t care, if I'm wrong, I like my version better.  Anyway, there’s a lot of power on this track, and the German band finds ways to integrate the best traits of KMFDM, Rammstein and Combichrist into one gleefully raucous experience.  The riffs are catchy as hell, the drums pound like hammers and the contrasting pacing in the songs between the gothic leads and the industrial walls of noise is perfect.  Bonus points for the band’s cover of the German pop song “Was Ist Denn Los Mit Dir.”  The album would made it on this list without it, but having it just puts it over the top.

#2 – John 5 and the Creatures – “Season of the Witch”

In the history of my year-end top ten lists, there have only been two albums to crack the rankings while not featuring a single lyric.  This one, and John 5’s previous album “Careful With That Axe.”  Unlike so many other virtuoso guitar players, John is trying to not just entertain with his impressive skill, but write songs that actually have movements and sound like songs people would want to listen to.  His variety of styles doesn’t hurt, as he bends from rock to metal to country to ballad and occasionally mixes them with great success.  Part of what made the old “Tom and Jerry” cartoons work so well is that the artists had an amazing ability to tell stories without words.  It’s a rare talent and John 5 taps into that same vein, though through a different medium.

#1 – The Midnight Ghost Train – “Cypress Ave”

No album this year has me coming back to listen to it again and again more than this one.  Robert Heinlein has a great quote in his book “Time Enough for Love” that concludes with “Specialization is for insects.”  Midnight Ghost Train, off the strength of their very solid previous album “Cold Was the Ground,” adamantly refuses to specialize, exploring six or seven different musical idioms within their one album.  They can play rock, blues, metal, hip-hop with brass accompaniment, ballads of hurt and songs of praise.  They are, in turn, comedic and campy and angry and cautious and chastising and thoughtful.  All of that occurs on “Cypress Ave,” before you even get to the best part.  The album’s final cut, “I Can’t Let You Go,” as powerful an expression of the combination of blues and metal and pure songwriting as has ever been recorded.  It’s the best song of the year, on the best album of the year.  If you ignore everything I’ve said up to this point, then I urge you to take heed of this record.  It’s that good.

Album Review: Life of Agony - "A Place Where There's No More Pain

To say it’s been a long journey to get here by New York natives Life of Agony is a gross, negligent understatement.  We don’t have the time or inclination to review the whole saga here, but the information is readily available for those who seek it, and it can all succinctly summed up by saying that an awful lot happened.  Yet, for all the hiatuses and tours and albums and rumors, we stand here today in 2017 faced with largely the same band we were introduced to in 1993.

More to the point, as the band embarks upon the long awaited journey that will see the release of their new studio album “A Place Where There’s No More Pain,” the message remains the same as it was almost a quarter century ago.  Life is hard, it can be unfair, mistakes are made, and somewhere, buried down at the bottom, the knowledge that you’re not alone.  It’s a message that has become Life of Agony’s stock in trade (and how could it not, just look at the band’s name,) and it is where their music is the most comfortable.

This new record, perhaps predictably given the band’s membership and their combined experience, doesn’t subscribe unilaterally to the signature sound of Life of Agony, but instead lives at the comfortable intersection of Life of Agony and A Pale Horse Named Death.  If the last time you paid serious attention to LoA was all the way back at their debut, you’ll find this album to be just as dire, but musically mellower, content to roll the riffs at you rather than batter you with them.

That doesn’t mean that the element of menace inherent to this band or style of music is absent, just altered ever so slightly.  The opening up-and-down thump of “Meet My Maker” breathes life into the album from the start, in that delightfully dirty way that only sludgy bands from the Northeast ever seemed to really master (with all respect to grunge, this movement is similar but not the same.)  There’s a certain sense of ‘old home week’ in hearing this sound again, a coming back to form that fans of the band have been awaiting for so long.

The vocals of Mina Caputo remain as melodically anguished as ever, coupled as a near perfect vehicle for the simple but affecting lyrics containing a lifetime of personal struggle and perseverance.  The shadow of suicide, for so long an integral part of Life of Agony’s lyrical metaphor, remains lurking in the background, coloring even the otherwise comparatively bright title track.  Much as with all of their records, “A Place Where There’s No More Pain” is not the kind of record one chooses to rock while driving to the grocery store on a bright, sunny afternoon.

As much as we parenthetically dismissed grunge earlier, the fans of that once paramount genre will find a lot of comfortable listening here.  It’s not such a stretch to suggest that “Dead Speak Kindly” would have been right at home in the post-“Dirt” world of Alice in Chains – that may sound too easy a parallel given the usual subject matter of that band and of LoA as we previously discussed, but that doesn’t make the comparison less valid.  Fans of AiC (myself included,) may wonder wistfully if that band could have turned out like this if only Layne had survived.

That said, there is also some room here for the punk roots that set the stage for all the NYHC scene to thrive.  While the verses of “A New Low” sludge along with the dark drudgery of Type O Negative, it’s in the choruses that the fist-in-the-face of punk shows a winking hint of fiery life.  This continues as the band rolls into “World Gone Mad,” perhaps the only other similar cut on the duration of the album.

Which may, in turn, be perhaps the only failing of this effort.  For all that “A Place Where There’s No More Pain” rumbles and shambles through an introspective and eminently listenable forty or so minutes, many of the songs strike much the same notes over and over again.  There is just the barest but noticeable hint throughout the course of the proceedings that some of the selections are indistinct from one another, which also heightens the sense that this record lacks a taste of the je ne sais quoi of “River Runs Red.”

But tread carefully before rendering judgement – to compare those musicians from more than two decades ago to these musicians is perhaps borderline unfair, even if it is the same group of people.  This album does not lack for quality, it’s merely a different experience than “River Runs Red,” which remains so vital because recording technology allows it to sound as it did back then.  Where that album is ragged and vitriolic, this one is mature and measured.

So, when it’s all over, “A Place Where There’s No More Pain” may not be quite the same achievement as “River Runs Red,” but it doesn’t necessarily need to be, either.  Times and themes are allowed to shift over the course of nearly twenty-five years, and so this album serves as a reminder that Life of Agony both is and isn’t the same band that we once knew.  After a long break and an incredible, documentary-worthy road to get here, the band has served us fans with a quality album that’s a credit to the legacy of the artists that produced it.