Time Signature
The eliminator...
Genre: crossover
After a fully fledged hardcore punk release in "Victim in Pain" from 1984, Agnostic Front started venturing into metal territory on their sophomore full length album "Cause for Alarm".
While, if one conceptualizes the musical style as weight scales, there is more punk weight than metal weight on this album, Agnostic Front have a more metallic sound due to the addition of a second guitarist and the incorporation of thrash metal elements, such as muted guitars in certain places and double bass drums. another element from metal land is the use of frantically shreddy guitar solos, which are very likely to have been inspired by thrash metal acts like Slayer.
The energy and the riffage is mostly hardcore punk, as is the attitude. All the breakdowns are there, but they are typically centered around more metallic sounding riffs. The perspective on performance seems to be that of a metal musician, as the performance and production are marked by the tightness and professionalism of metal musicians at the time rather than the sloppiness and DIY-approach of punk artists.
"Cause for Alarm" should be of interest to those who like both primitive old school thrash metal and hardcore punk (and to fans of crossover metal, of course). In addition, it has a certain historical value, being one of the seminal crossover releases from hardcore punk artists (that's what the additional 0,5 star indicates).