Agony Bag United Kingdom

"Agony Bag were a strange band who composed some very schizophrenic, but also very original music. While relevant to metal and the NWoBHM movement, their music is more than just metal; blending in heavy metal and hard rock riffage with punk vocals and jazzy and progressive elements, I guess Agony Bag can be described as an early type of avant-gade metal band. And to this cocktail, you can add band image that combines glam rock and shock rock, twisting both totally out of proportion.

This collection of songs document the schizophrenic nature of Agony Bag's corpus of compositions. On the one hand, we have punky tracks like "Rabies Is A Killer", "Nursery Chrymes", and on the other avant-garde and progressively oriented metal tracks like "Venus Flytrap", "Feelmazumba", "White Stick", and other tracks like "Vodka" and "I Want to Touch You", and "I Can" are progressive rock songs, and other tracks again, like "Sally of Leicester" and "Golden Shower Passer" are straight 70s metal/hard rock songs. Even the categories I've imposed upon the different tracks on this release don't really hold, because each track contains elements from other genres.

This album contains a lot of very original and artsy music, but I think it might be difficult to get one's head around without having to break down some of the standards set by a 21st century mind. I think that fans of punk music and progressive rock might enjoy this album just as much as, if not more than, metalheads - I suspect that especially fans of Burnin' Red Ivanhoe and Jethro Tull will appreciate Agony Bag.

(review originally posted on metalmusicarchives.com)"