I actually get sick of making this comparison, as it seems to come up in literally dozens of reviews on this site, but The Agony Scene sounds like In Flames Jr. on Get Damned. I tried to get around it, but it is unavoidable. Lead vocalist Mike Williams's high, raspy screams are nearly identical to Anders Friden's, most notably the post-Colony-era In Flames. The band's formula is also standard: dueling guitars, commonly-placed breakdowns, screaming vocalist, double bass, et cetera, et cetera. The songs are three- to four-minute scampers, bordering on melodic death metal in most cases. But for some reason this is dubbed “metalcore” in this day and age. There are no clean vocals until the final track, “Old Scratch,” and it turns out this Williams dude actually can sing a little bit. Another song worth mentioning is “Dances with Devils.” This fucker is catchy, with strong guitar harmonies and could have been a B-side to Carcass's classic Heartwork album. This is a good thing. The band apparently has had several line-up changes and each one has altered its sound. Williams has said the band made a strong attempt to get back to the writing and style of their self-titled record. I guess this will be up for the fans to decide.

Most of the material here is what you'd expect if you're familiar with this style, but I wouldn't warn people to stay away from The Agony Scene. If you're a metal fan—and you most likely are if you're reading this—you could buy an album by any one of 50 different bands in this same vein and none of it would be bad necessarily, just nothing new. The recent explosion of metalcore and metal in general in the last four or five years in the United States has seen hundreds of bands pop up. Now that the trends and fads are starting to fade, it'll be interesting to see who gets weeded out and which bands are strong enough to stick around for another few albums. I would like to promise that The Agony Scene will be one of these that hangs around, but I can't. At this point, The Agony Scene seems more like a follower in the genre than a leader.