AGONY FACE is a 5 piece Technical Death Metal band from Italy. From their Bandcamp page, they describe their sound as "schizophrenic and surreal death metal with "golden ratio" structures and harmonizations based on pitagoric rules, hypnotic melted scales and modern technical-progressive elements." Two years after their last full album, the band is releasing their first ever EP, containing 4 tracks, each of them at over 6 minutes long. Their previous works gained a number of followers for the band and much respect from the metal community, creating some serious expectations for this new release.

"XXVII Future - Remote" really caught my attention and in my opinion is the best track of the EP. After an introduction of around 1 minute long with a narrator and some futuristic background music, the actual song shows up, and it's wearing corpse paint. I mean, we can definitely hear the Black Metal influence on this track. Great riffs are accompanied by some violent blast-beats and deep growled vocals, all of this done with quite an intrincate melody. After the mayhem, the song ends the way it started, with an outro very similar to the intro.

"XXVI Future - Voiding" is very unpredictable, as it contains different elements and tempos. Some parts are quite fast and aggressive. Balance is found when the hostile sound meets the melodic excerpts, letting the progressive side of the band surface. This track is here to confirm that these guys have some serious skills. "VIII Past - Voiding" starts with a Prog Metal vibe that remains for most of the song and that I personally love. The vocals here show more versatility, as we hear some deeper and lower sounding growls. The track, overall, is dense. You can feel the tension even during the calm passages. Once again, there is a display of technical abilities from the musicians.

The last track of the EP is "XXVIII Future - Concrete", and it does start with a futuristic vibe. Once again we have some calm passages alternated with some more violent blast-beats. One thing that caught my attention in this song is the bass line. I would say that the end of the song, and therefore the end of the EP, is quite epic. It brings a perfect end to this release by giving an 'end of the show' feeling to the listener.

"IV Time Totems" is, in my opinion, a very enjoyable album for fans of Death Metal, Blackened Death Metal, and Heavy-Prog stuff in general. Overall, I would say that the songwriting is very creative and original. Even though the vocals are not outstanding, I really liked them and how they fit the music. The instrumentals are pretty elaborate and the band definitely managed to create the atmosphere they were after.