Blighted Eye – Agony’s Bespoke
Release Date: 20th September 2024
Label: Beyond The Top Records
Bandcamp
Genre: Blackened Death Metal, Progressive Death Metal, Melodic Death Metal, Doom Metal.
FFO: Opeth, Swallow The Sun, Dark Tranquillity, Rotting Christ.
Review By: Rick Farley
“Agony’s Bespoke is a monumental, hour long work, marking a new height for the bands growing skills of songwriting and storytelling. Theatrical and immersive, the album is heavily inspired by the 2018 Australian film, “The Nightingale,” and tells a similarly tragic story. Highlighting the transformative power of violence and the ultimate futility of revenge, the album seeks to explore the lasting emotional and psychological impact of trauma.”
Greater Seattle, Washington’s progressive, blackened death metal act Blighted Eye are ready to unleash their agonising journey of powerful death metal, with fiery black tinges of nastiness and mesmerizing flourishes of progressive ambience on Agony’s Bespoke via Beyond The Top Records. Produced, mixed, and mastered by Alex Sedin with some seriously killer cover art by Caelan Stokkermans.
Agony’s Bespoke is an album meant to evoke a dreadful atmosphere that delves deep in the recesses of the human psyche, as well as to inflict as much musical brutality as possible. A fleshed out blending of styles and genres so effortless, that you don’t even realize it until the album has fully soaked itself into your subconscious. At times hauntingly melodic and melancholic, Agony’s Bespoke is as enchanting as it is bone crushing and will undoubtedly engage all of your auditory system many times over. The intricacies of progressive metal with a taste for the extremes of heaviness and cloudy darkness await.
Album opener Tragoedia slowly transcends from stormy sounding clean guitars, synths, and full bass throaty gutturals with searing guitar airiness and bulky drum patterns. Visceral riffs and harsh vocals that remind me of a combination of Dark Tranquillity’s melodic sensibilities and Opeth’s progressive heaviness full of epic grandeur. Brutality blending with darkness, somehow uplifted by triumphant auras that are felt through the emotive music. Blighted Eye do not hide their musical inspirations, but also have concocted a sound that’s very much their own, fusing it all together into a well-crafted balance of varying intensities.
In Enmity is a jagged riff fest bursting with a fast-paced bludgeoning. Full on, double bass pedal hammering throughout the track. Crisp sounding guitars lead a technical attack intricate enough to impress and hooky enough to bang your head with recklessness. Catchy melodies ring out over the quick, aggressive nature of the song, adding a level of soulful bliss that highlights even more the energy of the track. More than halfway through the song, it breaks into a slower progressive structure full of layered atmosphere and absolutely ripping leads over top. Harmony filled clean vocals ring out between low growls that even out the juxtaposition of this section.
Initially jarring, track six Pallid starts off as a nightmarish mix of blackened fury and progressive dissonance, only to transform into a groove filled pounding of wicked guitars and harmonic squeals. The track effortlessly shifts between punishing heaviness and doomy walls of sound. Gnarly lows and screechy highs, the vocals are as diverse as the dense sounds coming from your speakers. Ferocious black metal explodes from a brief slow clean guitar passage showing its sharp teeth, and threatening violence upon anything nearby.
While Agony’s Bespoke is a hell of an album, it is not an album for the impatient. Its hour long runtime, depending on the person, could be a detriment. Me personally, I can appreciate longer albums more so than the average listener as long as they are written well and have a continuous flow that moves towards a satisfying ending, as this one does. Blighted Eye is definitely a band worth checking out.
(4 / 5)
