They are young, they are ambitious – and they have a mridangam player (at least, that’s what the cover announces): Art Against Agony (AAA) from Stuttgart/Germany (and, since being founded in 2011, joined by more members from different places) describe themselves as a collective for contemporary art, as opposed to just a band. Their names and faces stay in the dark. Besides the music, they also create videos and make photography.
You can read more about AAA in our review of the previous EP “the forgotten story”, released just at the beginning of this year, and our interview with the_maximalist (mridangam, anyone?). Their latest output, “Russian Tales”, is based on the experiences made at an
excessive tour (20 concerts!) through Russia in 2016. While musically there is no Russian influence in the five instrumental songs, the outcome is leaving few to be desired. The first song, ‘Königsberg Präludium’, doesn’t give any hint on what is still to be expected, though. It is a slow start and enchants the listener with a groovy bass line and an abstract melody with some pulled guitar notes. The destination that “Russian Tales” is heading to gets more clear when the the odd timing of ‘Nothing to declare?’ sets in, and with another groovy bass foundation the song slowly is heading to harder territories after a melodic prog-rock guitar part. The grand finale is marked when squeaking guitars and djent riffs break into a sudden silence. Now the collective gets out all it’s weapons, swings into jazzy territory and back to staccato guitar riffs, taking a lush proggy direction and heading over to spacey key parts. All that in one song, mind you – ‘Tea for the Dragon’ is a complete mess, but still it makes perfect sense and joins all those pieces into one flowing whole. Still, it is surpassed by the butt-kicking ‘Coffee for the Queen’, which does not hide it’s “Train of Thoughts”-era Dream Theater influences, but modernizes that with sudden breaks and crowns it with sounds of the name giving beverage being brewed, which is definitely something I never thought I would hear in rock music. Art Against Agony leave us for now – breathless – with the staccato guitars of the heavy djent monster ‘Saratov Incident’, which in the end dissolves into the most beautiful melodies of the past 23 minutes. “Russian Tales” is a wonderfully composed and crafted EP. Each song has it’s very own agenda, and yet in their combination and dramatic order they play perfectly well together, showing the diversity of the collective’s musical abilities and leaving the listener almost overwhelmed but no less hungry for the next full length album. As for the mridangam? You’re right if you wonder about the lack of Indian percussion on “Russian Tales”: Sadly, the_maximalist (even if stated otherwise) did not yet contribute the unique twang that he describes in our interview – giving the friends of interesting and stimulating music another reason to look forward to the next record.
Warning #1: There’s no Prog here! If you’re expecting IQ or Marillion then you will be disappointed. This is about modern, progressive Rock. And Jazz. And Metal. Probably. Warning #2: The deliberate and seemingly incorrect use of upper and LoweR case fonts and italics in this article may cause seizures in grammar-sensitive individuals. [EeeeEEk! – Ed] In June 2021 I was approached by Stefan Huth, who you may remember from such album reviews as Isaac Vacuum’s Lords. Stefan is involved in a musical EP by a collective know as art against agony. He asked if I would care to review it. There are few things in life that you can count on, but one of them is that Stefan Huth is always involved in mind-bendingly interesting music. art against agony is one such project. aaa background – aaa is an instrumental jazz/metal band and an international artist collective founded 2012 in Stuttgart, Germany. This much information is given away. In researching some of the music through YouTube I came across several videos of musicians, running through music, reminiscent of certain bands associated with the “progressive metal” genre and a live stream concert from August 2020 (which I heartily recommend – consider skipping the intro, and start with the track Coffee for the Queen). In keeping with my suspicion that, in the same context as ants serving the colony, the band is an extension of an artistic collective; egos must have been set aside (as far as any musicians’ egos can be 😉 ) as it is the music that must shine – and indeed it does! The identity of members of the aaa band, I suspect, is secondary to their output. Indeed, the performance videos and live stream show them resplendent in their Vendetta masks, further underlining my hypothesis about ants and egos. Oh, before you start wondering how adopting Vendetta masks could possibly still be cool, watch the videos on YouTube because art against agony don’t just hide behind this device, they positively own it. aaa – What are they
like? In our universe, art against agony boldly ignores convention, as they demonstrate by consistently flaunting their disdain for upper case letters (which poses certain practical problems when using a word-processor to write about them, whatever universe you’re from). In one parallel universe, Brand X has been infiltrated by Art Against Agony, the bastard lovechild of Gojira and Slayer. AAA writes all of Van der Graaf Generator’s songs, who are facing off across No-Man’s Land in a war waged against the 1980s incarnation of King Crimson, whilst avoiding the prog clichés that so put me off the bands who represent the “Neo Prog Movement”. These tropes have been banned by The Progressive Aspect Accord of 2107 and are gloriously absent. This is not old-school Heavy/Progressive Rock, oh no! This is not your Dad’s Prog Rock. In every universe, AAA is the American Automobile Association. On this side of the looking glass, art against agony has much in common with our parallel universe Art Against Agony. Armed to the teeth from an arsenal of staccato drums, pinch harmonics, tapping, fanned fret 8-string guitars, Touch Guitar and many-stringed bass, aaa attacks your senses, fusing heavy guitar-based progressive rock with jazzy experimentation. Reincarnation Suite has a little of everything that I like. It’s percussive, complex, and dynamic, using polyrhythms and odd time signatures. I hesitate to use the word Djent. Certainly, they can Djent. It isn’t Djent (it is …a bit, sometimes). aaa history 2014
– aaa release their first album, Three Short Stories, through Vault Records, which inspired descriptions I wished I’d have written, like: 2016 – The second album: The Difference Between A Duck and A Lobster. 2017 – A busy year for aaa. Tour influenced re-imagined versions of five songs from Three Short Stories was released as an EP, Russian Tales (where they had recently toured). 2018 – The third studio album, Shiva Appreciation Society, was released. A new member, an Indian mridangam player called The Maximalist (who I assure you is not Chris McCormack – Google him), meant a blending of classical Indian music with progressive jazz/metal. aaa concluded 2018 with a European Tour (Germany, Austria, France, Switzerland). 2020 – Solanaceae EP As a live band they have toured Russia, Brazil and Europe. In 2019 they supported British prog metal band Haken for their European Summer Vector Tour. But am I diving too deeply? But the enigmatic aaa could have people everywhere! Maybe they might even put a contract out on me or for Stefan for being as forthright! I could risk turning art against agony‘s collective attention away from “contemporary aesthetics applied to music, photography, videography and performance arts”, even if it means they engage the services of a hit man, who I shall call Trevor. Trevor only works in broad daylight whilst, by night, maintaining a presence as his alter-ego, as the head plastic tube wrangler for The Blue Man Group. Where was I? Oh yeah… aaa interview I cut to the chase… Are there members of this collective who have feet in more than one camp – musician photographers, performance videograph artist? I was aware of you through the Tapping community and then your involvement with Isaac Vacuum. I loved
Lords. I played the crap out of it and it’s still in my playlist for the car. How does art against agony sit with your other commitments, like Isaac Vacuum? At the moment of compiling these questions, Bandcamp lists the featured artists – Nippy Noya (percussion), Mars Williams (saxophone), Mattias IA Eklundh (guitar) – but not the band members, as such. Was this a conscious decision to maintain some anonimity? Bob Dylan’s Nashville Skyline is billed as an LP and it’s 27-minutes long. On Bandcamp, Reincarnation Suite is also billed as an EP, but it’s just short of 30-minutes. To me, this is every bit an LP. Am I wrong and does it
matter? Some of this music is incredibly vibrant and highly energised… for example Differentiate. Were any of you able to be in the same room for this recording, given these strange locked-down times? Is there anything you wish
I’d asked but didn’t? [I meant the important stuff readers want to know about, but Stefan didn’t hold back here]: What’s your star sign? What’s your
favourite colour? Are there likely to be gigs? Have you ever experienced performance anxiety and, if so, how did you deal with it? Do you have a cat? TPA’s readers are interested, primarily, in the music – but hopefully this piques their curiosity and I’ll wager some will be interested in experiencing some of the work from other individuals in the collective. Where would you
direct them next? aaa –
conclusion TRACK LISTING Total Time – 29:36 ADDITIONAL INFO LINKS Tags: art against agony, Stefan Huth |