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Though they have only been a band for just over five years, Abandoncy have grown into their status as a staple in the heavy music scene of Kansas City, MO and surrounding areas. Composed of Damian Fisher on guitar and vocals, Lincoln Peterson on bass and vocals, and Morgan Reed Greenwood on drums, Abandoncy doesn’t need strength in numbers, and instead makes the most of what they’re given to create an end result much larger than life.

Throughout their lifetime and a handful of releases, the trio have carefully fostered and perfected a style of music that is technical and beautiful but doesn’t shy away from any avant-garde, noisy, or punishing moments. While you’re able to discern sounds brought from noise rock of the 80s and 90s, post-hardcore of the 90s and early aughts, as well as multiple waves of emo and screamo, Abandoncy’s affinity for abstract structure, strange time, and dramatic pause gives them a style all their own. At its end it is breathtaking, addictive, and harrowing to experience.

On their third full-length, Assailable Agonism, you find the band pushing even further. All six songs boil over with masterful instrumentation and crushing composition. Clocking in at just under 19 minutes, it feels like a brief but brutal haunting of all of your personal spaces. Paranoid, blistering, and all-consuming, coated with the grime of drying riverbeds and dust storms. Through its juxtaposition of melodic and noisy elements, it has a presence that will draw in fans of all different styles of music.

Anxious drumwork with the sonic treatment of a punch to the face, gritty basslines with the heft of gravity itself, and guitar lines akin to vertigo in that they are both mesmerizing and dizzying. It all accumulates into splinter-like music, stabbing at you unwittingly and embedding melody deep under the skin. It dares you to be intimidated.
Aided by the recording captured in KCMO cornerstone Howdy by drummer Morgan, it possesses a dynamic sound that is undeniable. Assailable Agonism is at times barren and cavernous waiting for the pin to drop, and other times cacophonous and claustrophobic exploding in front of you.

Lead single “Scarlet Rot” is a jangly track that propels you forward. Frenetic, tremolo picked riffs over deep bass progressions, accompanied by drums that sound like a caged bird trying to fly away. It is one of the more accessible songs on the record, but still shows some of the sinister energy and teases more heavy moments seen in other tracks.

Second single “Night Drive (feat. Eugene S. Robinson)” is the thunderous closer on the record, and a perfect encapsulation of everything you can experience in the other tracks. With a melodic beginning, it builds just to tear it all apart, devolving into a boisterous, monstrous second half. It is destructive of all in its path like a natural disaster, and it’s still the softest song on the record.

Assailable Agonism is out on September 20th via
The Ghost Is Clear Records, Learning Curve Records, and Vina Records.
(written by Nat Lacuna)

Pressing Information

300 Black
First Pressing
Split between
Abandoncy as well as
The Ghost Is Clear Records, Learning Curve Records, and Vina Records.