siLLy puPPy I just love bands from countries that pick up styles of music that aren’t native to their land and do things with them nobody else would. AGONÍA ( Agony ) is one of those unorthodox bands that formed in San Luis Potosí, México in the year 2000 and has released two albums since. The first was this debut EN RUINAS ( In Ruins ) which emerged in 2005 and the second came in 2011 titled “No Respiraremos el Aire Muerto ( We Will Not Breath The Dead Air ).

While not dishing out a wildly bizarre style of avant-garde metal or experimental rock, AGONÍA has been interesting in how it mixes elements of black metal, folk music, crust punk and even good old fashioned heavy metal into a steaming cauldron of explosive furor. This album of 13 tracks is only over 24 minutes long and is primarily classified as a form of crust punk for its brevity and directness that includes heavy distorted hardcore punk constructs and screamo style vocal shouts.

The black metal aspects are heard in the lo-fi production, filthy raw kvlt sounding guitar tones and overall bleakness. Folk melodies find their way into the mix as do unexpected anthemic 80s heavy metal musical scales. The contrasts are rather unique and although perhaps not the most bizarre out there nevertheless offer an interesting deviation from anything i’ve really experienced before. The art is in how seamlessly all these styles are forged together in a cauldron of molten metal until a new bastard is born.

While in stylistic regalia EN RUINAS comes off as a hardcore crust punk album for sure but in composition is quite a different beast and just off-kilter enough to get my attention. No punkiness was sacrificed to make room for the other elements on board and the lyrics are evil and Satanic ( in Spanish ) and the music perfectly exemplifies such horrific subject matter. A nice little discovery from the middle of central Mexico. The second album took the black metal punk thing even further with aspects of death metal so all i can say is that i like this band’s approach.