Kris_Agiel_Interview

Gloon from the Full Metal Mayhem team caught up with Kris, bass guitarist in apocolyptic deathsters Agiel. Topics included New York, Old School Death and Saturn?

A quick background on the band, how long have you been together and what musical backgrounds do yourself and the band come from?
[Kris] We've been together with the current line-up since November of 2000. Tim has been in the band since around the Spring of 2000, which is when they began working on the batch of songs that appear on the first CD. As for musical background, there are numerous bands that influence our music, but most of them are probably not immediately evident in our playing. All the members of Agiel listen to many different types of music; metal, jazz, classical, ect. ect. Some of our favorite metal bands are: Suffocation, Deeds of Flesh, Gorgasm, Pessimist, Dying Fetus, Morbid Angel, Hate Eternal, Pyeamia, Disavowed, Disgorge, Nile, Cephalic Carnage, Burial, Death, Immolation, Dimmu Borgir, Cryptopsy, Carcass, Cynic, Spiral Architect, Opeth, Epoch of Unlight, Dark Funeral and many others (this list varies depending on who in the band you ask.)

How was the bands name contrived and does it hold any 'special' meaning for the members and their music?
[Kris] The name Agiel means 'the Enochian intelligence of Saturn', James and Mike created it. The name derives from some sort of occult mythology or another. I'm honestly not to familiar with the story behind it since I'm the newest member of the band...and I'm just the bass player, I don't write any of the lyrics or lyrical concepts.

You are based in New York a city largely known for their Hardcore roots not so much their Death Metal. How strong is the NY Death Metal scene and who else is flying the DM flag apart from yourselves?
[Kris] We're actually from Rochester, which is about 6 or 7 hours away
from New York City (this comes as a surprise to many people who assume we are from NYC.) The death/black metal scene in our town is really poor. The shows here are boring and the bands here are generally rather bad (other than Kalibas). There are many great death metal bands from the US, but they aren't from our area.

What message are Agiel trying to get across, what is the bands motivation?
[Kris] We are just a bunch of musicians who are trying to make some good,
quality death metal. That's essentially our motivation behind what we do.
There is no real 'message' we are trying to spread.

Death Metal has been enjoying a resurgence since its semi demise during
the mid nineties, where do you see Death Metal heading towards the new
millennium and how do today's leaders shape up against the old guard of
the late 80s early 90s?
[Kris] I see death metal as constantly evolving and getting better. A lot of people speak of the 'good old days' in the early 90s and late 80s, but quite frankly most of the earlier stuff doesn't impress me much. I find a lot of it boring and the musicianship is sometimes quite unimpressive as well. I prefer a lot of the newer more 'technical' bands like Deeds of Flesh, Cryptopsy, Gorgasm, among others. Don't get me wrong, there were some good bands from the early 90s that were good such as Suffocation and Disincarnate; I just feel that as a whole death metal is improving as time goes by.

Finally a new album due out sometime in March 2002, what can we expect from Agiel and what does the future hold?
[Kris] You can pretty much expect us to remain dedicated to making death metal; at least to the best of our ability. I wouldn't expect us to undergo any radical changes in terms of our music anytime soon; so I'd look for more of the same, except we will always try to push ourselves to create faster and more extreme music.