The bulk of the band’s catalog has been packed with 30-second bursts of chaos: songs screamed into answering machines and then played in real time on Frozen Corpse Stuffed With Dope; punishing grind on the early selections from the Bestial Machinery collection; absolutely gonzo madness on the 100 songs packed into 20 minutes on the opus Altered States of America and countless splits with other bands.
ANB’s long-awaited full-length Agorapocalypse changes things up even further by stitching together actual songs that combine the ANB touch with 80s thrashcore. Vocalist and lyricist Jay Randall checked in with About.com to discuss Agorapocalypse; new co- vocalist Kat of Salome; the cult status of Altered States of America and what he thinks about basement drum machine grind bands. He also put in a plug for fans to get a physical copy of the new CD rather than download it: “There’s a lot of stuff packed into it and if you download it you will miss it. The music is only one part of the dynamics. We have so many surprises in the booklet. It’s a release worth owning and not ripping off a computer.”
Justin M. Norton: It’s been a little quiet in the ANB camp in the past few years. Has the band been busy with other projects?
Jay Randall: If you just go by the full-length releases we kind of fell off the map a little bit. We’ve been steadily doing split EPs. We had a split CD with Apartment 213. We kind of wanted to go back to our roots for a while. Doing split seven inches with other bands is our equivalent of playing a show. We had a lot of EPs out, we’re constantly writing material, but it takes a long time for us to settle on a sound we want to stick with when writing a full-length, that we are going to stretch over a bunch of songs.
The new album is probably the most musical of all of your releases and perhaps a little more accessible than something as heady as Altered States of America. Was that the intention?
Yeah. We’ve definitely matured a lot. Altered States was a project album that was a massive undertaking. It wasn’t even meant to be considered a full length. That record was a lot of hard work. Not that the new one wasn’t, but we’ve been pushing toward this kind of sound for a while. We finally committed. We went through spurts where we are listening to this sound or that sound. Scott (guitarist Scott Hull, also of Pig Destroyer) was able to find a way to blend a lot of different stuff that we happen to love as far as different sounds. It’s a solid sound that was it own sort of work.
There are pieces of DRI, SOD and 1980s thrash.
Absolutely. Scott and I have been big fans of that era of thrashcore for a long time. Throughout the whole recording we were been listening to Corrosion of Conformity’s Animosity, DRI’s Four of A Kind. Those are classic records. I know there’s a thrash revival going on but we’ve been steadily listening to this stuff for years, even when we were doing the grind-style material. We just wanted to stay a little closer to home and we were listening to all that stuff when we were recording this record and deciding what direction to take it.
What I generally expect from an ANB release is more or less chaos. That seems to be less of the case on this album. Is the whole point of ANB to change what people expect with each release?
That wouldn’t work for a lot of bands, but it’s an accepted thing that we can pull off a complete 360 in our sound. The Domestic Powerviolence split was so loved by people and such a complete turnaround of what we’d been doing. People accepted and loved it. That record had a higher replay value than stuff in the past. Before, people would approach an Agoraphobic record as an absurdity.
With Domestic Powerviolence, people were into the songs. They really dug that record. We wanted to do something that had that same sort of replay value. It was nice to have people know the words and listen to the songs more than a few times. We’re hoping to have that happen again. Before, people would listen to our records and just say well, holy s---. And that’s as far as it would go.
You’ve also added a third vocalist, Kat from Salome.
I’m up in Massachusetts so I had never met her. Scott played me Salome’s material when he was thinking of asking her into the band. I was pretty blown away. When she applied vocals to our material, she comes out like a person that’s been singing in a hardcore band for 12 years. I thought Richard (vocalist Richard Johnson) and I would be out of a job.
It is an interesting twist to add a female singer considering some of the lyrics.
Yeah, people think we are sexist and hedonist. She’s singing lyrics that I wrote with so much angst attached. It was an interesting dynamic and had me laughing. She offered lyrics and in her own right took the gloves off. It’s funny to have her singing some of these lyrics.
Sort of like having Robin Quivers on the Howard Stern show.
Exactly, exactly. It’s funny to have her be a mouthpiece for some of the stuff I wrote for this record.
How is Scott able to balance songwriting for Pig Destroyer and ANB?
Scott approaches ANB almost like a vacation from certain expectations. He has to write so many damn songs between the two bands. I’m happy that ANB is a way for him to pursue what’s interesting without having to stay to what’s expected from a band. We’re given a lot more freedom because we’re constantly changing it up.
