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Agitprop 666
Mind Control
Posted: Friday, April 25, 2008
By: Amy Mauk
Flash Animator / Motion Graphics Slave
By: Amy Mauk
Flash Animator / Motion Graphics Slave
This one-man industrial band is a brilliant programmer, but man cannot live solely by drum machine.
One of the beauties of artistic collaboration is the opportunity for two people to do what they do best and come up with a product that is greater than the sum of its parts. Agitprop 666's Maggotspawn has a gift for programming drums that are loud, crazy, and interesting; at his best, he inspires both dancing and riot-starting. Some songs, like "Urban Combat," bring to mind songs by Acumen Nation, Razed in Black, and Front Line Assembly. Others, like "Dick Cheney," are a bit more crazy and along the lines of Funker Vogt. The cover of Bauhaus' "Bela Lugosi's Dead" goes completely off the rails and becomes more of a comment on the goth classic than an homage to the song itself.
Unfortunately, like many one-man bands, Agitprop 666 is desperately in need of a collaborator. The half of the band that would handle lyrics and possibly even a melody is nowhere to be found, and Maggotspawn's taste for looping news clips brings to mind a collage made by an angst-ridden teenager. Looping news clips has been done to death and now falls under the banner of "proceed with caution." In other words, one needs to have a darn good reason and had better be able to bring something new to the idea; Agitprop 666 doesn't seem to be meeting either of those requirements. On "Cannibal Corpse," a song about Jeffrey Dahmer, a clip about a head being found in a refrigerator succeeds more in being repetitive than shocking. Maggotspawn has also found a way to make Auschwitz, terrorism, and 9-11 redundant. Perhaps the idea is to comment on how society has become desensitized to the issues by making listeners realize how redundant an offensive idea can become once it's repeated a hundred times, but this is a bit of a stretch. The most offensive element of these songs is the way that issues like the Holocaust and 9-11 are treated as catch-all hot-button issues. We're not given a new perspective on large-scale killing; we're given a repetitive loop of "inmates at Auschwitz were to be killed by gassing." It's not artistic enough to justify reducing the killing of six million people to a news clip that's being used to sound "extreme," and it's just not as smart as it could be. Maggotspawn needs a partner-in-crime who can write words to make these songs all that they can be.
Unfortunately, like many one-man bands, Agitprop 666 is desperately in need of a collaborator. The half of the band that would handle lyrics and possibly even a melody is nowhere to be found, and Maggotspawn's taste for looping news clips brings to mind a collage made by an angst-ridden teenager. Looping news clips has been done to death and now falls under the banner of "proceed with caution." In other words, one needs to have a darn good reason and had better be able to bring something new to the idea; Agitprop 666 doesn't seem to be meeting either of those requirements. On "Cannibal Corpse," a song about Jeffrey Dahmer, a clip about a head being found in a refrigerator succeeds more in being repetitive than shocking. Maggotspawn has also found a way to make Auschwitz, terrorism, and 9-11 redundant. Perhaps the idea is to comment on how society has become desensitized to the issues by making listeners realize how redundant an offensive idea can become once it's repeated a hundred times, but this is a bit of a stretch. The most offensive element of these songs is the way that issues like the Holocaust and 9-11 are treated as catch-all hot-button issues. We're not given a new perspective on large-scale killing; we're given a repetitive loop of "inmates at Auschwitz were to be killed by gassing." It's not artistic enough to justify reducing the killing of six million people to a news clip that's being used to sound "extreme," and it's just not as smart as it could be. Maggotspawn needs a partner-in-crime who can write words to make these songs all that they can be.
