Band:	Blighted Eye
Album:	Agony's Bespoke
Style:	Melodic black metal, Progressive death metal
Release date:	September 20, 2024
A review by:	musclassia

01. Tragoedia
02. The Wounding
03. In Enmity
04. Howls From Beyond The Mist
05. A Feast For Worms
06. Pallid
07. Nightingale
08. A Reverent Stillness
09. Agony's Bespoke

While it certainly isn’t without its highlights, I have found 2024 to be a bit short on truly standout releases compared with the previous few years, and those that have caught my attention have typically been from bands I was already well acquainted with. As such, it’s nice to have an album come along from a brand new name and blow me away.

Blighted Eye are a pretty new name on the block, with Agony's Bespoke being their full debut after forming back in 2019. Having said that, there are some familiar names as far as other bands its members feature in are concerned, most notably Pantheïst and Aethereus. Blighted Eye aren’t too close to either band, but of the two of them, they probably have more in common with Aethereus, as the style on Agony's Bespoke could be adorned the ‘progressive death’ label; however, that arguably undersells both how melodic and how blackened the record is.

It's most certainly a proggy album at least, with every song bar 1-minute ambient interlude “Nightingale” running for 6 minutes or longer. The band ease their way into the album, as opening track “Tragoedia” begins with muted drums and atmospheric clean guitar for the first minute before the first distortion kicks in, which is accompanied by the first of many excellent lead guitar parts. Before going further, I want to sing the praises of the lead guitar work across the album; whether it’s solos, hooks, lead riffs, motifs or texturing layers, I reliably found my attention drawn towards it on pretty much every song here. As it goes on, “Tragoedia” straddles the divide between meloblack textures and more death-oriented tones, which are reliably backed up across the album by well-executed and well-integrated growls and shrieks; Blighted Eye have an excellent grasp on when to use each of them to best effect.

Another thing Blighted Eye have got locked in is their riff creation, as this album is an absolute conveyor belt of excellent riffs. “The Wounding” does a great job of delivering tasty verse riffs, as well as both chonkier dealthy and blackened tremolo’d riffs. It also has a great guitar solo; other songs that really deliver on that front are “Howls From Beyond The Mist” and “Pallid” with surprisingly bluesy ones, and also “A Reverent Stillness” with a great, more electrifying one near the end. On the riff front, it’s hard to look past “In Enmity”, a song that veers a bit more towards technical death territory but bulldozes along with one fantastic riff hook after another.

Tonally, the album is fairly consistent throughout, despite having the range of black, death and occasionally doomier passages, but there is some fluctuation. “Howls From Beyond The Mist” is unexpectedly upbeat, from both the melodeath riffing in the verse to the blackgaze-leaning tremolo early. It’s also a song that features the first of two segments in which clean vocals appear, which I must admit I find to be slightly weaker in execution than everything else on the album, but they’re both competent and short enough to not hinder the overall experience. A song in the other direction is “Pallid”, which kicks off with a frantic dissonant blasting opening and maintains a grimmer vibe for a few minutes before turning towards a more atmospheric direction.

If you’re looking for bands to compare with, I’ve seen Hath namedropped elsewhere, and I do think there is an overlap, although I’d consider Blighted Eye to be more consistently melodic. The usual frame of reference for progressive death metal, Opeth, are not entirely irrelevant as a point of comparison, although I mostly picked up on it in rare moments, like a sequence 4 minutes into “A Feast For Worms” with rather Mikael Åkerfeldt-esque growls and brooding riffing. Also, I found Dark Tranquillity coming to mind when listening to “A Reverent Stillness” in particular, even if I can’t pinpoint the precise nature of the similarity.

Even when factoring in that there’s experienced musicians behind it, Agony's Bespoke is absolutely remarkable for a debut album; aside from the weaker clean vocals, I’m struggling to think of anything much to list as a downside to it. I will acknowledge the already mentioned song lengths, and the possibility that some listeners may find that some tracks run out of steam; personally, there’s none here (not even the closing 11-minute title track) that ever reach a point where my enjoyment diminishes, but perhaps it could be said that few of the songs end on a standout climax that truly pays off the extended lengths. Still, that has just as much to do with the strength of the preceding music in each track than any deficiencies in their conclusions.

Hitting a home run with pretty much their first swing, Blighted Eye have immediately ensured that fans of the genre will be keeping firm tabs on them going forward; Agony's Bespoke is going to feature firmly in my internal end-of-year discussions.