Metal with a message

>> The Agonist right wrongs with riffs and roars

REFLECTING DUALITY: The Agonist

by LATEEF MARTIN

It seems that more and more artists are taking a stand as the world goes to hell in a Christmas stocking. From System of a Down to Talib Kweli, Radiohead to the Roots, Nine Inch Nails and thousands of bands in between, stabs at the Bush administration and the fall of the environment stain the promises of politicians with blood and oil.

You can throw local metalheads the Agonist into the fray, with lyrical matter ranging from genocide to terracide. “I think it’s great that people are becoming more self-aware, socially and ecologically,” says singer/growler and diehard vegan Alissa White-Gluz. “The environment and animals deserve some much needed attention. Some people insist that we can’t even treat people right, but what are they doing for people that is preventing them from caring for animals as well?”

But metalheads need not worry. As conscious as Alissa’s words are, she’s still content to roar like a 300-pound man. Amid the metal that blasts the skin off your bones and melts your eardrums, the contrasting lulls and calm create a dynamic that makes songs like their single “Business Suits and Combat Boots” that much more intense.

Touring on the strength of their debut album Once Only Imagined (released on Century Media—a follow-up is slated for September), the Agonist have gained respect beyond Montreal, and beyond the limits placed on a female vocalist. “Some people can’t look past the female band member. I think it is a positive and a negative at once. Luckily, I have been quite successful at earning the respect of fans and fellow musicians once they see me live and talk to me after the show.”

Speeding metal fronted by a female singer growling about the world’s ills may sound familiar to a few Montreal metalheads out there. You may remember the band as the Tempest from a few years ago, so why the Agonist now?

“The name fits us for many reasons,” explains White-Gluz. “The agonist is the character who is torn between good and evil, and our music reflects that duality as well. In pharmaceutical use, an agonist is a drug administered to induce feeling in a patient. We would like to think that our music can do the same to our audience.”