Agvirre – _ _ _ _ _ _ | EP Review

Deconstructed black metal, as their tagline would have them. Agvirre are that, but also so much more.

The Manchester-based eclectic collective Agvirre turned heads with their debut release Silence, as it examined the personal experiences of living with mental health struggles and life’s trials and tribulations; their latest EP _ _ _ _ _ _ (pronounced ‘Hidden’) picks up where its predecessor left off, though broadens its lens to wider society. While not originally a decision fuelled by the pandemic, the themes of the album have come into even more stark relief in its wake. 

Eclectic is perhaps the best way of describing them; Agvirre delight in testing the limits of what extreme music can be. Their compositions wander through genres with abandon, but never without a care for the song itself or without purpose. Black metal, post rock, shoegaze and even a brass ensemble all sit alongside one another effortlessly in a scintillating display of the malleability of heavy music. Political unrest, societal upheaval and terrified existential musings all play their part in crafting its narrative that deconstructs and challenges what makes metal, metal. 

Even with just three songs, the band still cover tremendous ground; ‘Urtica In Glass’ begins with a recording of a tense encounter as the police harass someone seemingly without care for them. It’s unsettling, even more so when set against a yearning guitar melody and the brass melodies that introduce themselves as it goes on. This intensity isn’t lost in any way as the track erupts into blackened fury, all blastbeats and desolate howls. A shift in tone comes with ‘_ _ _ _ _ _ (In Plain Sight)’, acting as a midway point between the two longer songs on the record, with ambience and distorted voices bleeding into one another nightmarishly. 

For all its plaintive howls and visceral blackened extremity, _ _ _ _ _ _ does still search for hope and a brighter tomorrow, the brass flourishes in both ‘Urtica In Glass’ and ‘For El Dorado, Whenever I May Find You’, the two songs bookending the EP. They feel almost triumphant, as if a glimmer of hope has been seen, though not necessarily seized. This screed against harassment, inequality and cries for a better world plays out in a deeply affecting way that’ll occupy headspace for far longer than its twenty-three minute runtime.