First and foremost, Aggro makes serious music. Aggro does not care about the existence of any particular musical style, and does or will not intend to conform to one. It must be said, however, that Aggro is not music for the weak of ear. Song structures may sound a bit complex when exposed for the first few times, and lyrics are, well, not of the happy kind. You have been warned.
History
Aggro was founded in 2003 by Rob ter Heide (bass, ex-Philosopher), Clemens Kerssies (drums, ex-Void of Sense, Bodyrot) and Leendert Brouwer (guitar, ex-Philosopher). The base idea was to make experimental metal. Vocalist Frank te Riet (who also plays guitar and does background vocals in Grasp of Sense) joined in february 2005.
"Aggro"
Since the beginning of the bands' existence, we've been asked about the meaning of the word "Aggro". Aggro is a unique english word, and its loose translation goes something like this:
The expression of anger in a way that is not harmful.
One of us read about it in a sociobiology book, and figured it would do great as a band name. Aggro makes music to channel negative energy. And apparently, we have a lot of negative energy inside of us. It is like therapy. It keeps us away from the pills, the gun or the bat. It's not like music is the answer to all our questions, frustrations and sadness. For us, music is the mouth we scream through, the eyes we cry through, and the lungs we breathe through.
Compositions
Composition wise, most metal bands nowadays inherit from pop music. This often means a lot of repetition. "verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus" is a very common one. Aggro chose not to compose in this tradition. We enjoy the excitement of classic compositions. Telling a story with music. Not repeating paragraphs over and over. Although not likely to be healthy to tell your kid before he goes to sleep, Aggro does tell stories. Stories made from music. A good and clear example is the mid part of our song "Monodrama". The lyrics of Monodrama deal with the pointlessness of the endless arguing about whose vision on life is right. It's a matter of perception. There is no universal right or wrong. The music of Monodrama represents this sort of "arguing" by playing a series of scales that seem "whiny" against each other. They argue each other. After these conversations, the pointlessness of them is represented by a harsh, brutal staccato riff with very expressive vocals.
Lyrics
For Aggro, lyrics are literally equally important to the instrumental part of the music. The music gets written along the lyrics. Each part of the music must represent the words sung at that very moment in the song. We feel that only that way you can come to a maximal level of expression. Because we want our music to be universal, our lyrics are not timely. We do not write about current events. We do not write about world problems. We do not write conceptual stories about "some guy". We write about thoughts and emotions that are universally appliable, independent of time. In Aggro, these thoughts tend to be dark. We will not attempt to cover up any of that. Apathy, intense grief, suicide. You can probably find most of your life's shit-can in our songs. Well, at least you can identify yourself with our music then, and you're free to see that as a positive thing.
Influences
As most other musicians, we are definitely inspired by other musicians. This does not mean however, that we would ever consciously copy existing music. We try to stay far away from other bands' defined styles. Nevertheless, we cannot deny being inspired by bands such as Pestilence, Death, Fear Factory, Cynic, Watchtower and many more artists, including of course classical composers such as Carlo Gesualdo and Alexander Borodin.
Future
Aggro doesn't have much world shocking plans for the future. We'd like to play for a live audience a lot, and eventually record a cd. After that, we'll see if we still like making this kind of music. For now, we love it.
Current Members
Leendert Brouwer - Guitar
Rob ter Heide - Bass
Clemens Kerssies - Drums
Frank te Riet - Vocals
Unsigned, Aggro
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