(We present DGR’s review of Agoniepositur, the latest album by the Austrian deathgrind band Distaste, released on October 24 by F.D.A. Records.)
It comes as a surprise to see something from Austrian grind band Distaste so soon after the release of their 2023 album Der Ertraeger Und Das Fleisch, but it seems to be the band’s modus operandi to quickly burst into and out of existence like someone lobbing flash grenades from the window of a passing race car.
Sliding in just under the wire for 2025 is an impressive act too, given that the crew comprising Distaste do keep busy with a small handful of other projects, but perhaps the summoning call to the blastbeat has proven too strong, bringing them home from the wilds to once again unleash a sub-thirty-minute hammering of music that exists entirely in the redline and rarely moves from it. Dynamics, to put it politely, can get fucked.
Of course, it goes without saying that we were likely going to follow anything Distaste did anyway because the group has somehow remained criminally unsung while at the same time landing some impressively heavy albums – including a few that have topped or made the top ten of your humble author’s year-end lists. Agoniepositur continues the group’s favored hobby of portmanteauing song titles together to frankenstein some new lumbering creature that will no doubt spin a few heads once you’ve figured out how to pronounce it while also keeping true to the band’s frenzied songwriting style.
If anything, it almost feels like mana from the gods that the band just outright call a song “Last” and have others that just seem like classic sentences. We take our small victories and brief moments in oases while we can get them because otherwise when it comes to an album like Agoniepositur, everything is going to be musical scorched earth.
Distaste are first and foremost a grind band. That is the one thing you can never forget when dealing with them. Hailing from the school of Nasum, Rotten Sound, and so many other hardcore and metal-melding groups, Distaste have taken the philosophy to heart and for nearly twenty-five years have been unleashing albums of sub-two-minute songs with drumming best described as being trapped under a hailstorm from hell.
The group didn’t fully get under way until 2008 on their album Of Abyss Hearts And Frailty but since then have steadily refined on a sound that has been equal parts acidic and fiery. They’ve dealt in sludgier moments with bass-driven overtones and they’ve dealt in frantic meltdowns while sticking to a fairly steady release schedule of four-to-five years between full-lengths. There will be the occaisonal EP, single, or split in between of course, as grind bands are want to do, but the thirty-minute therapy check-in with the group was mostly reserved for that aforementioned half-decade window.
That’s why the presence of Agoniepositur so soon after the group’s 2023 album Der Ertraeger Und Das Fleisch is surprising, because Distaste – while being an active band – don’t do a quick turnaround like that. But, as mentioned above, there are a lot of similarities between the two siblings to such a point that you could almost convince someone that the genesis of the current album happened during the writing sessions of the previous. Many elements are carried over between the two, and perhaps not surprisingly, though just as welcome, so too has the quality of the songs.
Beginning on the aforementioned Der Ertraeger Und Das Fleisch, Distaste started to work in a very chaotic style of guitar lead. Near-apocalyptic at times and seeming to herald the fall of the heavens, these quick, chaotic bits of melody would appear and screech their way into and out of a song before you had a chance to comprehend what had just happened. They’re not a random hammering of tech-death notes, though Distaste have certainly gotten a lot more technical in their playing since their early days, but it has augmented a sound that has become increasingly vicious over the years.
2019’s Deibel somewhat solidified Distaste’s sound and was almost as if it was the record their initial albums were working toward. Since then the aspirations of this particular group of unassuming Austrians has been more in line with a careful iteration and alteration than a fully blown scouring down to the bone and subsequent rebuild. Distaste’s intensity will remain forever in the overdriven mode it seems.
We’ve spoken at length about Distaste’s songwriting approach prior, as we’ve been covering the band for a long time now, and much of Agoniepositur keeps their hallmarks in place as the band oscillate between an extroverted and outward explosion and a near-psychotic break. Distaste are of course classically targeted at society’s ills as well, though they’ve sought to expand upon their subject matter as their career has grown bigger over the years. They’ve now become a consistent undercurrent of the grind-scene. Not quite unsung, but always a welcome suggestion to people looking for new music to sink their teeth into, and likely have them knocked out afterward.
“Apex Oppressor” and “Last” make for an early album highlight-pairing, one well within the vein of Napalm Death’s own “Apex-” approach, and “Last” equally violent and thankfully with its titular word shouted enough that you can make a play at understanding the song at first pass. “Der Thonraueber” is sheer chaos for a whole minute, and “Das Rudeltier” is similarly singule-minded though dominated more by the death metal lows at first than its face-scarring high-screamed sibling. Plus, any time they give their drummer Yannick time to shine is always a good one, given just how much they put the poor guy through having to effectively strip-mine a drumset at ludicrous tempos in every song.
Closer “Agoniepositur” is the only deep-diving song on this album as it clears four-plus minutes. Most of that can be credited to the closing sample, otherwise it is a teeth-bared and violently-retching movement of a song to close out an album that is running with enough engine speed to make a rally car jealous. Distaste have been slowly stacking blocks on Agoniepositur up to this point and it does a perfect job as the final summation of the album. A double-pronged vocal attack, multiple shifting angles from the rhythm section, and a searing ending thirty-seconds or so before we lead into our spoken movie sample, “Agoniepositur” is as neat a bow as could be tied on an album – as best as one could do if one were strapped to the side of a rocket and sent veering into a ravine.
Agoniepositur stays close to a very high bar that Distaste have set for themselves on previous albums. It is ear-burningly quick and sharp enough to cut through buildings. The band ring through clear as day on most of their songs and the musical assault only ends when its closing title song actually stops. Prior to that inevitable and obviously stated moment, the music is delivered in breathless fashion. Songs stop and start as suddenly as you would expect from an expertly polished grind band, but Distaste do a fantastic job of bending their instruments to their will, which has allowed for them to head down increasingly demented and subversive pathways to help break them out from the overall machine-gun drumming pack.
In short, Distaste continue to nail it on all fronts with Agoniepositur and will continue to remain one of the easiest recommendations to grind fans out there.
https://fda-records.bandcamp.com/album/agoniepositur
https://www.facebook.com/distastegrind/
https://distastegrind.bandcamp.com/