Album Review: Avgmnt - Seqvences
Reviewed by Dan Barnes
Hailing from Portland, Oregon, Futuristic duo, Avgmnt – pronounced Augment – is the bleak, dystopian vision of ΩZ and αn - or Zach Wager and Fernando Ruiz as their passports more likely suggest; but, perhaps, that unconventional nomenclature best suits the trans-human, cyberpunk Hellscape of this debut album.
Taking the sounds of Synthwave, EBM and Industrial music and aligning those with the austere visions of Aldous Huxley and William Gibson and a future of Totalitarian states, social dysfunction and a malleable population.
Seqvences is Avgmnt’s expression of this oncoming inevitability as told through the concept of the city: Hexatropolis 2.0. In reality, Hexatroplolis 2.0, is little more than a caricature of the world of the past few years, of overt and unlawful governmental control and a population forced to live in fear by a corrupt media.
To reflect this uncomfortable truth, Avgmnt have created a twenty-six minute manifesto to the post-human. As you would expect from an Industrial album there is much emphasis on the repetitive, with ideas being explored to their maximum. Copy <Waste> combines harsh electronics with staccato beats and pulsating guitar lines in a dissonant piece. Somatose takes its central concept of the punishing effects of modernity on the physical and spiritual presence of the self to a deeper level through a slow and deliberate build, distorted vocals and soulless sounding guitar.
Sandwiched between these two tracks is Hvman Skin, which intimates Avgmnt do have an ounce of humanity by offering a more upbeat composition, reminiscent of With Teeth-era Nine Inch Nails; yet, for all its fat riffs and discernible structure, it still revolves around a cold, machine-like aesthetic.
At the centre of this record are Avgmnt’s most organic songs: Nvll and Slvmtropolis. Both begin in the vein of an AI making an approximation of what music should sound like; Nvll has the ethereal take of ghosts in the machine, whereas Slvmtropolis has a distinctly Morbid Angel, cira Destructos vs The Earth, stomp.
As both songs develop they explore the many facets of Avgmnt’s nihilistic world view through mechanised sound and deeply impersonal, heavily sequenced passages.
Only closer, Pvre Black comes close to the recognition of the human in the process with the raw and grimy electronica at least resembling the organic. Look deep enough and the sub-two minute Bvrial belies the cold, urban feel to the record as its vast keys evoke the images of swirling galaxies and the pillars of creation.
Seqvences is a short and discordant experience of jarring sounds and a cold, almost inhuman, missive on the future awaiting us. It’s also full of interesting moments and thought-provoking passages; uncomfortable at times, certainly - but no one said this music stuff had to be easy.
