Agness, oh Agness. In a wave of humourless, testosterone-fuelled punk and metal, Agness Pike blow a huge musical raspberry at the entire scene and simultaneously become one of the best bands in it. Anyone who has caught them live in the past year will have seen this band, who have more than their fair share of experience between them, grow in confidence and improve with every performance. They are without question the most entertaining band to watch in Oxford right now. Their performances are normally enhanced by the looks of confusion on the faces of mean-mugging metal fans in the audience when frontman Martin Spear takes to the stage.
Indeed, the pull of Martin Spear’s onstage persona is comparable to the affect that the crazy old man at the bus stop has on people – you want to avoid his gaze, but you can’t stop looking at him. With a Hula Hoops packet stapled to the lapel of his military jacket, and a handbag round his arm, he espouses etiquette tips from a book that may or may not actually have words written in it. It’s all an act of course, but he gives in so completely to this character that it’s spellbinding, not to mention hilariously funny.
His voice is also an unexpected shock to those expecting a high-pitched caterwaul or some kind of grunt. Instead, Spear goes for a campy vocal delivery that combines Jello Biafra, John Lydon and the ‘Monster Mash’. It’s brilliant. To top it all off, Spear is a wonderful lyricist, playing with double meaning in his deceptively simple lyrics (even referring to this in ‘Taking Control’). As a lyricist, Spear seems to be as obsessed with magic, voodoo and the cosmic as with more earthy problems like delusions of grandeur and distaste for disco music. ‘Ruthless’ is a haunting tale of sacrifice, and we wonder why more songs don’t have choruses like ‘Disco’ and ‘Spellbound’ because they’ve been stuck in our head for sixth months now. We can only speculate what ‘Rubber Love’ is about, but it certainly sounds rather kinky.
That’s not to say that Agness Pike don’t mean business musically. In fact, the humour and theatricality of the vocals is strikingly juxtaposed by the relentless, driving metal that carries it along. And it works beautifully on songs like ‘Rubber Love’ and ‘Now is the Time’ where Spear punctuates his words to the internal rhythm of the riffs. The band is ridiculously tight and handles changing rhythms, time signatures and dropping in and out of half time effortlessly in the highly capable hands of drummer Mike Brown. Pete Marler’s bass sound can only be described as gnarly (particularly when leading the way on ‘Taking Control’ and ‘Disco’) while Chris Brown’s guitar sound is crunchy and menacing throughout.
There are hints of Black Album-era Metallica in the songs and a few brief moments even recall early System of a Down, so you couldn’t call Agness Pike a wholly original band, but the songs are well structured and full of interesting dynamics, elevating them far above the majority of their peers. Their songs play off of one another so the EP rolls along like one long, exhausting nightmare. A freaky, old-school metal/punk romp… if you’re into that kind of thing.