REVIEW: Antigama – Warning

Following up their 2007 Relapse Records debut 'Resonance', Antigama are back with their fifth full length album 'Warning'.

'Resonance' was hailed by most critics as the peak of Antigama's recording career. It was also a slight but noticeable departure from the sound Antigama had slowly built on their first three full length albums, featuring clearer, cleaner production values and shorter songs. Instead of running through 10 tracks over 30 minutes, 'Resonance' featured 17 songs in roughly the same running time. The songs themselves were less cluttered and fairly absent of the dense, awkwardly structured and jarring polyrhythmic rhythms that had drawn me to the band in the first place. I still find myself listening to their debut full-length 'Intellect Made Us Blind' quite regularly and enjoying the muddied production mixed with mind-fuckingly complex and relatively indiscernible rhythms.

By giving ideas more breathing room and keeping most of their new material short and sweet Antigama had trimmed a lot of the fat off their music to create a more easily digested album. The more cynical among you might whisper conspiracies whether this was the work of the evil Relapse Records or whether the band organically progressed in such a direction. Whether this is for better or for worse I suppose is up to the taste of the individual. Personally when the excitement of the booming production wore off and I became more aware of some of the more abrupt songs that consisted of little more than 2 riffs I felt a little ripped off. The album definitely cooled on me.

However, if 'Resonance' made me a little uncomfortable with Angtiama 2.0 then 'Warning' allayed all of my concerns. This album is a clear evolution from the work they did on 'Resonance'. and I enjoy this album over it's predecessor in every single aspect from production to execution. These quasi-experimental mechanical Polish grinders have managed to create a series of tracks that are more chaotic, complex and cohesive than anything on 'Resonance'. Some of the songs like 'Heartbeat' reach tempos I don't remember the band ever meeting before.

There are more intense Dillinger Escape Plan-esque syncopations, more viscerally crushing peaks, catchier grooves and far more memorable songs. This is also the first full length to feature new vocalist Patryk Zwolinski (Blindead) after the departure of their previous vocalist of eight years Lukasz Myszkowski. While Lukasz did have a fairly distinctive voice, I actually think Patryk's raspy hardcore bellow sits just that little bit more comfortably in the overall mix.

Very fucking impressive. Excellent work guys. All fans of chaotic grindcore should be grabbing this today!

PS: The only reviews I could find on this album from Billboard and AsIce are absolutely pathetic. So much for a critical analysis.

http://www.myspace.com/antigama