Oh boy, "The End Of Hope" what a blast this album is, quite literally, I'll warn you ahead of time lower your volume before you start this up it wastes no time punching right into the madness. Okay, that's all you get for a sound warning. AGONY BY DEFAULT is a Death/Grind band with instrumentals touching a melodic style and vocals that are basically static, seriously I can't understand a word this guy says! Hey Aaron, it's Death Metal you idiot of course you can't, well jokes on you normally I can still pick stuff up but here the vocals are to gutteral for me. Although for an independent release the production is rather well done, near the end of the first song, "Degeneration," there's a talking (I think) but that just sounds like a bad cell phone reception, "can you hear me now?"

Okay, now let's get down to business. "Sleep," the third song on the album has some of the most Melodic Death Metal riffs I've heard so far this year (welcome to 2015 y'all), it has very little of the Grindcore influence except for in the rapid drumming but that can be considered Death as well. The vocals are still insanely guttural and all, but here's the catch, there are some high Deathcore style screams in there as well that give the deep gutterals a much needed contrast, some bands can take a hint from this. I also want to mention how careless the guitar segments in "Careless" seem to be, half the song is either rapid, insane tapping or "chug-chug-chug... Chug-chug-chug-squeely."

This is a good release for fans of Grindcore and more Brutal Death Metal or stuff like early CANNIBAL CORPSE; it's worth a listen especially if you want to hear nice vocal contrast. A little to gutteral for me but it's not bad, might come back to this later down the line.