I've already written a love letter to Agathocles, captured on their live in Baltimore LP.....because of course there's a live LP from my hometown so of course I had to write a piece for it.
And while I've never shied away from introducing a band, I dare say that few bands in the DIY punk/metal/grind sphere require less of an introduction than Agathocles. You mean to tell me you do not already own at least one of their records?? Friend, do you even grind???
This LP sees Agathocles as Jan in his room around 1999, armed with a 4-track, a guitar, a bass, and a snare drum. Some of the most filthy, disheveled, primitive Agathocles material I've ever heard. Mincecore never sounded so minced into shlop. This is Agathocles for people into shit noisecore and the rawest of grindcore. I'm really thrilled that this shit-fi audio attack is SPHC's contribution to the Agathocles canon and legacy. I think it's one of the finer moments.
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MY LOVE LETTER TO AGATHOCLES:
Like many people in this world, I own a lot of Agathocles records.
If you’re into grindcore, owning a few Agathocles records is unavoidable, near mandatory. With such a huge discography, from stand-alone classics like Black Clouds Determinate LP to splits with cool bands like Rot and Excruciating Terror, from random limited cassettes to splits with unknown obscurities, there’s a never-ending stream of mincecore. Always a new release somewhere. Always a record you haven’t heard yet. You could spend your whole life trying to grapple with their discography.
My own relationship to Agathocles started before I was even buying records. In the year 2000, I was a little kid spending all my time alone in my parents’ basement, using the power of the internet to fuel my never-ending search for the most extreme sounds I could find. My introduction to Agathocles was downloading Razor Sharp Daggers LP off Napster when I was 13. It was fucking extreme and brutal and everything I could want, catapulting them to a personal favorite.
Over 15 years later, I had changed a lot but Agathocles largely remained the same, still ceaselessly pumping out their specific brand of mincecore. I counted around 40 Agathocles records in my collection. I considered myself a fan. But I also began to question the value of the novelty. Do we really need yet another Agathocles record? Where’s the line that generic grindcore starts to get repetitive?
These questions were bouncing around my brain when Agathocles did their first ever USA tour in 2016. They were playing at a bar down the street from my house, and of course I was fucking excited to see a childhood favorite that had thus far eschewed any American gigs. But I didn’t have any grand expectations.
That evening dramatically changed the way I view Agathocles. I was very fortunate to have some quality time to converse with Jan and crew, at the gig and then throughout the night at my house. I gained a new perspective on this band.
Frankly, we really do need yet another Agathocles record. Because Agathocles is more than just a band; it’s an institution, it’s a statement about the power of DIY and the meaning of the network of friends. It’s an open invitation, to anyone looking to participate in our community. It’s the opportunity to share a piece of DIY legacy. It’s the excitement to bring your punk dreams to life. It’s the ability to unite individuals across continents, cultures, languages, and time itself. Agathocles is the power of knowing you can be acknowledged within our network of friends, no matter who you are or where you’re from. Agathocles is the empowerment of knowing that you can do it yourself. The meaning of Agathocles is that we are a network of friends as equals, and we can make our own punk future in a wholesome and pure DIY fashion.
But Agathocles is also a band. And I did them a great disservice by mentally filing them away as “generic grindcore”. There’s nothing generic about it. Agathocles is a finely curated exploration of the best aspects of the heroic years of DIY punk and metal from around the world. After spending so much time before their set fawning over bands like Sorto and Swankys, I watched them rage through their hits, and I came to see how their ‘mincecore’ style, beyond just being “grindcore with a heavier emphasis on mid-tempo groove parts”, is actually taking different bits and pieces of everything from Vorkriegsphase to Fear of God to Parabellum and blending them together into one cohesive sonic style. It has the heart and soul, the willingness to take chances, that made bands like Napalm Death so exciting.
It can be difficult to find these chances in such a huge discography. It’s too easy to get lost amongst the blastbeat brutality and heavy grooves. It’s too easy to miss a proper d-beat destroyer like “What Mankind Creates” or the off-kilter wackiness of “Alright, Let’s Feel”. You may never come across the keyboard-driven catchy pop number “Water” or the pogo-inducing noise punk “Hunt For Opportunities”. But spread throughout their discography, Agathocles is anything but generic or one-dimensional. They’re a band that carefully crafts and cultivates their numerous influences into their own personalized style: mincecore.
That night in Baltimore, Agathocles played a long and energetic set to a large and energetic audience, and it was about as good as a punk show gets. But their performance meant more to me than just a nice gig. It was one step closer I was able to take to understanding one of my favorite bands throughout my life. And while my life continues forward, and the world continues to descend further into capitalist dystopia and apocalyptic madness, I know that DIY punk will continue to maintain purity and viability, because somewhere on this Earth, Agathocles has a new release about to drop. I’m fuckin stoked.
-Kamikaze Dan
