Review Summary: Fans of OG deathcore - do yourselves a favor and listen to this instead of the revival bands. It's so much better
Antagony are probably the OG deathcore band, founded back in 1998 as part of the Bay Area scene. They then disbanded in 2009, and reformed ten years later, remaining active until today. In the meantime, some members of the band would found the more well-known band All Shall Perish and technical death metal outfit Oblivion. With deathcore gaining a lot of popularity bordering on the mainstream with its first wave in the 00s, how come you don't know this band? How come I didn't know them until today? This is a very difficult, yet burning question and I can only guess - one article puts it down to bad luck and bad timing - whatever it is, hopefully I'll be able to change this state of affairs somewhat with this review.
This is
Rebirth, their second full-length album, released all the way back in 2005. To describe the music on here, it's sufficient to say that it's everything the more demanding listener will appreciate (or at least tolerate) about the style of deathcore, with none of the trend-chasing annoyances attached to the genre that the less discerning listener tended to gravitate towards. The band's Wikipedia article even states that musical publications of the time considered this album to have come out 2 years too late - such was the tempo of changes to the young scene at the time (and the apparent preoccupation of its fans with bands keeping up).
Fortunately, Antagony were just content to do their own thing. I don't usually care who did something first in music, because that doesn't necessarily correlate with quality, but listening to this album will make it plenty apparent where so, so many melodic death metal influenced deathcore bands probably took their riff ideas from. Antagony's riffs are the same half-and-half mixture of Scandinavian melodicism with melancholic, distinctly American crust punk melodies that would go on to pervade the genre for years to come. This gives the music a sorrowful, contemplative vibe, though amplified by the copious amounts of aggressive drumming and a fair dose of chaos, the admixture of old school death metal. Of course classic deathcore tropes such as the occasional gang shout or the slowed-down, chugged breakdown are also present in abundance - and what's funny, hearing all of that so many times done by worse bands should make it feel tired by now - but interestingly enough, it doesn't. Again, it's rather surprising given the propensity for finding "derivative" something that actually was the source of some trope simply on account of having so much exposure to it from
actual derivers. But Antagony's music, despite being almost retro by the rapidly evolving standards of genre radiation, still feels fresh, interesting and well thought-out. There's a lot here that oldschool deathcore revivalists such as Angelmaker have been trying to recapture.
But let me elaborate on what I said in the second paragraph about the absence of the "annoyances" that the trendy kids chased after - which is also probably part of the reason this band has slipped past everyone's radar. You will not find any pig squeals or any boundary-pushing in terms of vocals here, the band is content with traditional death growls and higher shrieks (much like their contemporary The Red Chord), while edgy kids really seemed to appreciate vocal acrobatics at the time (and still do today, given the amount of worship Will Ramos is constantly getting). The sounds of the instruments are absolutely normal, with neither the then-trendy As Blood Runs Black-esque snare drum or the muffled guitar sound, so often emulated by the more melodic-oriented deathcore bands of the time. There are no Despised Icon-style "inception breakdowns" or extended gang-shouted sections. The songs flow naturally, rather than having been written in a way that would subordinate the rest of the piece to the breakdown. Not that there are no breakdowns - you'll find plenty. And despite being simple compared to today's djenty/mathy bands, and despite you thinking you've already heard it all hundreds of times before, they're surprisingly enjoyable. The whole thing ends almost as quickly as it begins, clocking in at a mere 37:23 - but every moment is genuinely enjoyable. In deathcore it's already an achievement when a release has no chore moments, let alone ones that are
positively enjoyable.
I used to think early deathcore was inextricably bound to some of the issues enumerated above - turns out Antagony, being the OGs of the OGs, never really succumbed to any of them, at least on this release. Top notch melodies, respectable technicality and freedom from silly 00s deathcore production and vocal tropes make it a refreshingly sanitary listen, especially for people like me who get physically sick when they think of bands such as As Blood Runs Black - which ironically turn out to be pretty much the same thing as Antagony was on
Rebirth, except worse and in a much ***tier package.
