The Agonist | Interview with Alissa White-Gluz

Montreal, Canada five-piece The Agonist are fast becoming one of the most exciting and interesting bands in modern metal music. Three years on from their surprising and critically acclaimed second album “Lullabies for the Dormant Mind”, this year the band returns with an incredible new record that tops everything they’ve done in the past and boasts an astonishing progression.

Scratch the Surface scribe Raymond Westland quizzed vocalist Alissa White-Gluz in order to find out more about their third fulllength record “Prisoners”. 

I was pleasantly surprised by “Prisoners”, the latest album by Montreal, Canada-based The Agonist. Vocalist Alissa White-Gluz was kind enough to provide us with some insights on the album, working together with Cryptopsy guitarist Chris Donaldson and getting involved with MTV… 

Thank for you doing this interview for Scratch The Surface. I must say I’m quite impressed with your new album. Are you happy the way it came out? 

“Yeah. It’s hard to be happy with something like this because you always want to go back and fix one thing or re-do one thing, but you just have to at one point be happy with how it turns out and go from that.” 

This time around you chose to go for a more straightforward metal approach. What triggered this? 

“Well, I completely disagree with that statement, and you’re the first person who’s said that, so I don’t know how to answer that question. I think it’s not a straightforward metal approach. I kind of wish it was, but I don’t think it is at all, I think it’s quite the opposite. It’s more technical and progressive than the last album.” 

Can you share some insights on the themes and subjects touched on “Prisoners”? 

“The lyrics for this album are, I guess, less perceptive. I kind of just wrote the lyrics and let them live as they were. I didn’t try to overdo any of them or rewrite them a million times, because at first I was doing that. Like with ‘The Escape.’ I wrote that song like three times before it turned into what it is now. So for the rest of the songs, I was like, ‘okay, it’s going to take me ten years to write this album if I do it that way,’ so I just kind of let the lyrics come out and left them as they were. Even to the point where songs like ‘Idea Moto’ are automatic writing.”

Read entire interview featured on Issue 3 here.