Agoni: En Rst Fr Fred 12″

Description

100% Classic Stockholms Mangel!
This LP contains all three AGONI (pre-Agony) demos including the long lost second demo and live material. Black vinyl housed in gatefold sleeve with extensive liner notes, photos etc.

Our take: Swedens De:Nihil Records brings us the collected recordings of this early Stockholm d-beat / hardcore band. While Agoni later changed the spelling of their name to Agony and released a thrash metal record on the UKs Under One Flag Records, theyre perhaps best known to punks for touring the UK with Anti-Cimex in 1986. I knew their name from flyers for that tour, but they released two demos in their earlier d-beat style and appeared on a couple of very hard to find cassette compilations. Actually, the second of these demos is so obscure they believed it lost, but a friend of the band turned up a copy and it appears here, where most people will hear it for the first time. If youve heard that first demo, youll be pleased to hear the second demo is just as ripping. In fact, the two sessions are so similar that its easy to miss when it switches from the first tape to the second on this LP. This is raw, Discharge-inspired hardcore in the vein of Agonis contemporaries like Mob 47, Anti-Cimex, and Shitlickers the good shit. If youre a Swedish d-beat fanatic, youre going to want to hear this Ive had side A playing on repeat since this arrived earlier this week. The b-side features their third demo, where they transition toward their thrash metal style (I like these tracks, but theyre not the main draw here) and a live set from the d-beat era with a rough but listenable recording that captures the band sounding ferocious. The sound on the LP is great, and the gatefold features liner notes in Swedish. If you take the time to translate them (here is a link to an official translation the label provided us!), youll glean some interesting tidbits, like how they were frustrated with their drummer for not playing the d-beat exactly like Discharge, how they recruited their guitarist when they spotted him at a pub with Discharge painted on his leather jacket, and how the bass player (who writes the liner notes) turned up to the second demo session to find the guitarist had already recorded the bass tracks (he quit the band in protest). If you live for unearthed obscurities like this, you wont want to miss En Rst Fr Fred.