Review of Antagony - Days Of Night

Antagony, at first, seem to suffer from some pretty rotten luck. This long-running (formed in 1996) act has, over the years, shared a basic sound and three members with deathcore superstars All Shall Perish, but haven’t garnered even a fraction of the attention their fellow Californians have attained. Antagony have apparently given up on the breakdowns and gang vox of their first two releases. Days of Night delivers a much “truer” take on stern, rumbling melodic death metal, though in all likelihood, these guys will continue to draw the dreaded deathcore tag because of their history and appearance.

Though Days of Night’s scant breakdown-y moments (on “The Ladder” and “Exhale Her Poison”) will be enough to send death metal purists’ noses rocketing skyward, these songs largely attempt to combine God Dethroned‘s melodic blasts with stout-but-listenable midpaced marches. Aside from the half-hearted tech riffs of “Terror” and “Exhale Her Poison,” this disc is a thirty-minute string of despondent, generally tremolo-picked melodies and low-high growl duets. The band’s Myspace-bio claims of “classical influence” are, predictably, complete bunk—the structures here are as arbitrary as any death metal band’s, but they at least render their straightforward ideas solidly.

“Solid,” though, is as complimentary as I’m willing to get with Days of Night. Though Antagony’s ear-pleasing competence, inoffensive style and a decent production work in the band’s favor, these songs are bordering on insipid. Neither crushingly heavy nor splendidly crafted, Days of Night delivers a brief blast of mindless entertainment that I struggle to remember even as I write about them. No doubt these songs hit a whole lot harder live, but Antagony otherwise need to develop a distinctive voice or a more commanding delivery before the masses will sit up and take notice.

Release Details

Antagony

Days Of Night

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