Agents Of Oblivion - Agents Of Oblivion > Reviews > Bleeding White Butterflies

Author's product rating:   

Originality	Definitely a cut above the rest
Lyrics	Thought-provoking
Quality and consistency of tracks	A couple of weak links
How does it compare to the artist's other releases	Good
Value for Money	Good

Advantages:	Dax Riggs perfects his psychedelic style .
Disadvantages:	A little uneven .

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

Following Audie Pitre's tragic death in 1997, the other members of Acid Bath respectfully agreed to call it a day, until the ceaselessly creative Dax Riggs formed Agents of Oblivion along with Mike Sanchez and a trio of newcomers. Expanding on the more psychedelic leanings of the defunct sludge band, as well as a brief in-between project allegedly titled Daisyhead & the Moon Crickets, Agents of Oblivion's sole full-length release largely abandons Acid Bath's angry groove metal style in a continuing process of Riggs' softening up, culminating in his more recent project Deadboy & the Elephantmen. Thankfully, for doom fans like me who found the more hostile sections of Acid Bath a little primitive and unpalatable, this album is content to vary between catchy, mid-speed stoner rock in the style of Monster Magnet and numerous other bands who continue to reap the benefits of being a Black Sabbath sound-alike thirty years down the line, and more reflective and emotive psychedelia. There's no shouting at all.

While its roots are firmly in the 1970s, this album's clear, modern production keeps it sounding fresh, and the layering of sounds to a crescendo of volume is reminiscent of apocalyptic post-rock from the likes of Mogwai and their successors, while the basic variation between predominantly acoustic or electric songs maintains a nice degree of variety. In general, the softer, more thoughtful songs tend to be the most accomplished, benefitting from Riggs' great vocals in a manner that was only hinted at in the more basic acoustic songs that occasionally crept into Acid Bath's recordings, and although the more upbeat, sludgy songs are a lot of fun, the style gets rather repetitive by the end. It's most likely for this reason that the album alternates between the two broad styles with each consecutive song, at least for the most part, but fortunately with commonalities through the backing synthesiser and predominantly slow pace to keep the odd/even shifts from being too obvious or jarring, as was the case with Iced Earth's questionable thrash/ballad rotation on their album 'Something Wicked This Way Comes.'

Riggs' vocals are surprisingly the highlight of the album, and are far more suited to this slower and less aggressive style of rock than the slightly annoying shouting that characterised his earlier career. Moving between a deep, soft singing style almost like a croon, he successfully matches each section's intensity and emotion in a really strong performance. The guitars of Riggs and Sanchez alternate between down-tuned groovy doom riffs and more atmospheric acoustic, with occasional lazy solos when the album calls for it. Alex Bergeron's bass is distinctly audible due to the polished production, occasionally filling in when the guitars are absent, and Jeff McCarty puts in a memorable and interesting performance on drums, hitting sparingly but powerfully. Chuck Pitre fills in as the keyboard player to enhance and expand on the spacey atmosphere in most songs or provide lead piano, without any distracting keyboard solos. As these songs come from the same slightly twisted mind that brought us the often-depraved Acid Bath, the lyrics are still rooted in a distinct creepiness, but are used less for shock value here; thus, Riggs' disturbed eroticism of 'Ash of the Mind' and disturbed romance of 'Slave Riot' ("Long ago I kissed her skull / sunbleached and beautiful / slick-wet with diesel fuel") are more effective in their preoccupation with decay.

1. Endsmouth
2. Slave Riot
3. A Song That Crawls
4. Dead Girl [Acid Bath cover]
5. Phantom Green
6. The Hangman's Daughter
7. Ladybug
8. Ash of the Mind
9. Wither
10. Paroled in '54
11. Anthem (For This Haunted City)
12. Cosmic Dancer [T-Rex cover]
13. Big Black Backwards

As the album alternates between stoner rock and psychedelic acoustic emotive... whatever, it makes sense to compare the relevant songs within each style. The stoner rock style is arguably the more straightforward, mainly derivative of other contemporary and classic bands, and these songs are required to do something pretty special in order to stand out. 'Slave Riot' is a good start with its aforementioned twisted love lyrics, and the fast, blues-based riffing style carries through to 'Ladybug,' which is firmly rooted in the seventies but makes for a nice meeting of blues and some limited country influence, complete with a nice solo, and holds some great, subtle transitions as the song gets louder and angrier in the second half, before disorienting listeners completely with Riggs' displaced double-tracked vocals. Duuude. 'Ash of the Mind' and 'Paroled in '54' more or less continue the same style to less effect, though the latter is notable for slumping into a seriously stoned slow section that almost sees the album grind to a halt before the musicians get themselves together again. 'Anthem (For This Haunted City)' concludes this strand of the album nicely, granting everyone a chance to shine (even the bass), leading out with prominent solos backed by the haunting keyboards. The only other song that slots into this rough half of the album is the cover of Acid Bath's own 'Dead Girl,' which I'm not quite so fond of due to my indifference to that earlier band and the shouting it entails, and though its Sabbath-style riffs incorporate seamlessly into this release, it has the unfortunate distinction of being pretty much the only song to really drag a on for a couple of minutes after my patience has expired.

That leaves a slightly more substantial and far more rewarding half of the album dominated by a depressive acoustic direction, much improved over Acid Bath's earlier attempts at the style that came somewhere between this, and the terrible amateur ballad attempts of Pantera. Opener 'Endmouth,' central 'Phantom Green' and closing 'Big Black Backwards' all move from relative tranquillity to a loud, oppressive post-rock style at no cost to maintaining the sombre atmosphere, still based predominantly around Riggs' compelling singing but backing it up effectively with the guitars, hard drums and spacey keyboards, the latter being permitted to deteriorate into utter weirdness at the end as some local kids swear at each other over a quiet synthesised trumpet. Presumably, whatever the listener was smoking will have taken its full effect by now. The rest are content to remain peaceful and reflective rather than apocalyptic, from the slow country-blues of the appropriately named 'A Song That Crawls' to the album's finest moment in the almost suicidal 'The Hangman's Daughter,' where Dax really sounds like he's on his last tether. 'Wither' continues in a similar style with help from the keyboards, and the cover of T-Rex's 'Cosmic Dancer,' a song I'm not otherwise familiar with, is different enough to stick out with its repetitive, sequential lyrics and even softer singing style, but kept from standing out too much. It's quite good.

As would be expected from its place in the chronology, Agents of Oblivion is an almost perfect link between the enraged sludge of Acid Bath and the hippie "swamp rock" of Deadboy & the Elephantmen, combining stoner riffs with a prominent acoustic direction to make a great modern psychedelic album, one that might not be experimental enough for prog rockers or hard enough for metal fans, but meets my tastes nicely in the middle.