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Agnosia: A Blot On The Landscape EP
Agnosia A Blot On The Landscape EP CD Album Review

Agnosia: A Blot On The Landscape EP

Progressive Metal
3.5/5.0

Greece's Agnosia is another band that's remained active over the last several, yet absent from the studio. For their tenth anniversary, the band brings A Blot On The Landscape EP, the first new music in five years.

Agnosia A Blot On The Landscape EP Band Photo

Agnosia

To be more accurate, this EP features five new songs and a re-recording of Pain and Sickness from their 2004 demo The Inner Conflict. Agnosia offers more traditional progressive metal, yet with a heavier, even darker, feel at times. Maybe across between Dream Theater with Symphony X with some Fate's Warning thrown. Many of the songs are characterizes by the sharp guitar riffs that dominate the arrangements. Notable within Noetic Healing, The Dyadic Encounter, and A Blessing In Disguise, the guitar line basically rules the song, wrangling every other element into submission. The vocals get the worst of it, the drums and bass sometimes rising along side. To be fair, the riffs are creative if not monstrous throughout. Often they lead to a decent solo as within Noetic Healing.

After these things, you get a reprieve with the song Numb. It's a quieter number with piano, a symphonic texture, and lighter guitar, but still a fine solo. You also catch how Agnosia can easily work with a catchy melody. And, after getting out from under the sharp guitar riffage, you hear how good a singer Takis Nikolakakis really is. Another lighter number comes at the start with In Awareness, a terrific instrumental that feature piano and some fine drumming in another symphonic context. Unfortunately, it gets shot in the foot with the inclusion of some indecipherable spoken gibberish at the end. As for the re-recording of Pain and Sickness, you get a taste of Agnosia's early progressive power metal roots. All in all, though brief, A Blot On The Landscape is an interesting return for Agnosia, though it did leave me feeling ambivalent also, as if something was missing from the mix.

Agnosia - Noetic Healing


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In Short

Though brief, A Blot On The Landscape is an interesting return for Agnosia, though it did leave me feeling ambivalent also, as if something was missing from the mix.

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