Have you ever felt old for one reason or another? Maybe you’re out running adult-type errands and everywhere you turn, there’s someone living life to the fullest while you wait in line at the post office. Perhaps you go to a show and a band that still has yet to reach high school blows your ass out of the water. If this terrifies you, maybe it’s best that you avoid Baltimore death metal band Noisem. With the age of its members ranging from 15 to 20 years old, Noisem (initially signed to A389 Records under the name Necropsy) comes right out of the gate with the debut LP, Agony Defined.
This record moves with such a sense of urgency that it seems to be on the downside of modern metal. There’s no occasional slow song that chugs along or despair-ridden ballad about being born just to die. Noisem rips through these nine tracks and aims to fuck you up. The first track, “Voices In The Morgue,” sets the siege off right, with circle pit-inducing fast parts that endure the majority of the track, paired with gnarly vocals and wailing solos driven more by the whammy bar than actual notes (a good thing for a metal band, indeed). The song actually slows down after about two minutes of pummeling into submission, but kicks right back in with a blistering solo that would make Kerry King weep. Noisem keeps the album going at full speed with “Birthing The Bestial,” which keeps up the intense tornado of noise-drenched metal. “Desire And Disgust” changes it up a bit, leaning on a heavy Cannibal Corpse influence, especially in the drums. The song goes for quality instead of quantity, ending the track at 77 seconds, the shortest of the album. The fourth song on Agony Defined, “Mortuary,” calls to memory the lyrical content of metal legends Death, spinning a tale of the title’s creepy atmosphere. “Mortuary” also features the first slower passage on the album so far which fits nicely with the lyrical content. Thrash heads take note: it took Noisem four tracks to play one slow part!
The latter half of Agony Defined kicks off with “Rotten Remains.” The title alone would fit nicely on Eaten Back To Life, as would the song itself. The song churns along, incorporating a good amount of double bass and just enough gang vocals to give the song a more thrashy hardcore edge to it. “Severed” follows, which is another short song, clocking in right at two minutes flat. But flat this track is not: the band continues utilizing the reverb-drenched gang vocals over a panicked fast portion which breaks into the heaviest breakdown on the album. The passage features a lot of palm muting, almost summoning the guitar playing of Mustaine and Hetfield during Ride The Lightning era Metallica. “Split From The Inside Out” follows, which finds Noisem chugging along for three and a half minutes and incorporating a little more melody into the track than on the previous six songs. The band cranks up the double bass once again to close out the song. The next to last track, “Chronic Dementia,” picks up the urgency once again, utilizing the same beat found in “Desire And Disgust,” which helps to move the song along nicely and keeps it from feeling like it’s three minutes long. The latter half of the song uses more intricate guitar work, especially in the slower break in the middle of the song as well as the solo. The final track of the album, “Agony Defined,” sounds decidedly grindier than anything else on the album of the same name. The drums explode right out of the gate with blasts and fast drumming over quickly-picked guitar riffs. The song also stops abruptly multiple times to shift gears from low to high and creates an interesting and jagged musical landscape.
I believe Noisem may have stepped up the death metal game with Agony Defined. The songs are solid, the members are young and talented, and the album’s artwork – done by A389 collaborator Szymon Siech – is a perfect visual companion to the dark and desolate lyrical content used on the album. Agony Defined will be released June 15th through A389 Records, but Noisem will have a limited run of 100 copies of the record during their appearance at Maryland Death Fest. The band will be opening the festivities on Thursday May 23rd with Bolt Thrower, Abigail, and more at the former Sonar compound in Baltimore, Maryland.
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