Battlefields

After the release of their 2009 full-length, "Thresholds Of Imbalance", Battlefields lost founding guitarist Andrew Wallin, and went on a brief hiatus from playing shows. "Agassiz" is the band's return to the trenches with two new members and a more sonically assaulting blackened blend of metal and hardcore. Agassiz blasts through six songs in under a half-hour, presenting a concept EP of the glacial lake Agassiz, whose dried up geographic location is where the band's base of operations lies. Fans of the band's previous work my be taken aback by the sheer force of this new material, with pummeling blast beats, but there is still the familiar sound throughout the EP that Battlefields has perfected since it's conception in 2006. "Agassiz" lyrical content deals with when Lake Agassiz's ice dams broke and rose sea levels, destroying the old world, and setting up the new world for corrupt religious control. Featuring artwork and layout by Seldon Hunt. "Agassiz" is different from the older Battlefields releases, the songs are much shorter (no more sonic landscapes for you) and they have fall into the Black Metal trend and have put some pinches of it in some of the songs like "Entangled Mess" and "An Entire Epoch", but in general all the songs still have that emotional character that Battlefields are used to bring. I don't know... as a huge Battlefields fan i'm still digesting this album. Maybe listening to it while looking to some iceberg pics will help to get in the mood. Buy it here.

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