If the Sex Pistols is the sneeze that announces punk’s head cold, Agnostic Front is the hangover that proves the infection has spread to the blood stream. These larger-than-legendary men have produced their 13th rapture of an album titled Echoes in Eternity.
For anyone who might be a little lost on the reputation: this is the band that defined the sound of working-class urban discontent in the early 1980s. Lower East Side–New York was a neighborhood that, at the time, looked like it had been bombed for aesthetic reasons. Agnostic Front took their setting and gave it the edge it needed to make certain demographics very uncomfortable, for good reason. They were a brotherhood that bought instruments and put everyone to shame.
Roger Miret (vocals), Vinnie Stigma (guitar), Rob Kabula (bass), and Raybeez (drums, later of Warzone) weren’t trying to make a statement about society; they were society’s statement about itself, carved into the side of a tenement wall.
Their first record, Victim of Pain (1984), sounds like a car crash in a phone booth–short songs, no solos, just a blur of moral panic and catharsis. They invented, or at least refined, the New York Hardcore sound: faster than punk, tougher than metal, and with lyrics that could double as parole hearing testimonies. But what truly made Agnostic Front more interesting than any other punk mythology is that they never pretended to be outsiders. They were insiders of a world that no one else wanted to enter.
The Lower East Side wasn’t just dangerous; it was economically bored. When they sang “United Blood,” they weren’t talking about unity in the utopian sense. It was more like, “If we don’t have each other’s backs, we’ll get stabbed in the neck.” There’s a difference.
They dropped Cause for Alarm (1986), which was the album that helped invent crossover thrash (probably because they were tired of the idea that punk and metal were supposed to hate each other). The scene didn’t really dig it at first (*eyeroll*). The record brought in metal riffing, double-kick drums, and a kind of proto-mosh rhetoric that would echo through every suburban basement from Long Island to Boise. If you’ve ever seen a kid in a Hatebreed hoodie windmilling his arms in a VFW hall, he’s living in a world Agnostic Front built.
Looking at the scene in 2025 with an honest lens—pop-punk on the radio, metalcore watered down (if not AI-generated, which is ironic), hardcore often retrofitted for nostalgia –Agnostic Front’s new effort is stubborn. It’s not winking or nodding at its legacy; it stands on it. And even better: it uses the legacy as an open hand, not a closed fist. “We have always taken risks, never followed the pack, and are really proud of how the album turned out… What we do in life now echoes in eternity.” Says Roger Miret.
Echoes of Eternity arrives via Reigning Phoenix Music (RPM), a label trying to keep metal and hardcore from being swallowed by nostalgia algorithms. The sound is colossal. A “HUGE’ mix courtesy of Zeuss at Planet-Z, which means every snare hit lands like a concussion grenade. Producer Mike Dijan keeps it claustrophobic, a brick-walled cathedral of distortion.
Fifteen tracks, clocking in about 28 minutes. No epics. No indulgence. The Shortest track is “Art of Silence” at 41 seconds–absolutely brutal. The longest is “Sunday Matinee” at 2:28, massive discipline. Knowing that I have to choose the top three tracks that make this album vinyl status legendary puts me also in the position of emphasizing that this album grabs you by the throat the whole way through, making it damn near impossible to choose..
Track 4. Tears for Everyone: The organic New York cold-clock of a morality head check is made perfectly clear on this track. For people who find the hard truth unsettling, if not sugar-coated, this is the clincher.
Track 6. Sunday Matinee: This is a salute to tradition and the simplicity of growing up in a city that only pops out diamonds; it’s also a salute to endurance. It’s a bop. It’s a sing-along.
Track 12. Evolution of Madness: Full circle acknowledgment of the insanity we’re dealing with now. Very shaming of ignorance, and it puts a number of people face-to-face with the contention of knowing their position won’t last long.
You can buy the album and epic merch here: Agnostic Front You can keep up with them on all socials. You can check out more bands on Reigning Phoenix Music here: REIGNING PHOENIX MUSIC.
Agnostic Front’s Echoes in Eternity arrived on November 7, 2025, via Reigning Phoenix Music. Order here.
