The Agonist

From left to right: Danny, Alissa, Simon, Chris, Paco

Does history guide you, or do you set out to change it?

—Business Suits and Combat Boots

The Agonist (formerly known as The Tempest) is a Canadian Melodic Death Metal/metalcore band from Montreal, characterised by topical lyrics, complex guitar work and a female lead who can sing (well) in both clean and growling vocals.

Their lyrics often consider themes that you might not expect from a death metal band, such as animal rights, social injustice and other contemporary issues.

Their current line-up is:

Alissa White-Gluz - Vocals, Lyrics
Danny Marino - Guitar
Chris Kells - Bass, Background Growls
Simon McKay - Drums
Pascal "Paco" Jobin - Guitar

Former members include:

Andrew Tapley - Guitar
Chris Adolph - Guitar on tour (2009)
Justin Deguire - Guitar on tour (2011)

So far they have released three studio albums and one EP:

Once Only Imagined (2007)
Lullabies For The Dormant Mind (2009)
The Escape (EP) (2011)
Prisoners (2012)

And they have music videos for:

The Agonist provides examples of the following tropes:

A Good Name for a Rock Band - "Agonist" means initiator/starter of something (fitting in with the band's topical song lyrics).
Air Guitar - How Danny comes up with his riffs.
All Men Are Perverts - Simon, apparently. He tried hitting on Alissa at his audition. Maybe it's because All Drummers Are Animals?
All Your Powers Combined - Their third album Prisoners combines the heaviness of Imagined with the progressive elements of Lullabies and adds a few creative twists of its own. It is generally regarded as the band's best work so far, and certainly their most mature.
Almighty Janitor - Chris, who provides both bass backing for Danny and Paco, and vocal backing for Alissa.
Altum Videtur - Memento Mori and Globus Hystericus.
Apathetic Citizens - Alissa's Berserk Button.
Audience Participation Song - Thank You Pain is an audience participation video casting Alissa as a defendent, death-growl Alissa as a judge, and the audience as the jury.
Black Sheep Hit - Waiting Out The Winter was composed by Simon.
The Cameo - Quite a few, including Youri from Unhuman and Frank Marino from Mahogany Rush. Even their producer got in a few sneaky Metal Screams.
- And in turn Alissa has cameo'd in songs for Synastry and Plasmarifle. You can see her wearing a Plasmarifle t-shirt at the end of the Business Suits music video.
Concept Video - Thank You Pain (verging on surreal).
Costume Porn
Distracted By the Shiny - Stopping in the middle of an interview to point out a typo on a passing van.
Dramatic Ellipsis - ...And Their Eulogies Sang Me To Sleep
Dress Rehearsal Video - Eulogies, Birds Elope
Epic Rocking - Ideomotor
Ethereal Choir - Swan Lake
- Also in the background of a few other songs.
Foreshadowing - Synopsis, the slightly mind screwy intro from their first album, contains a distorted vocal excerpt of Rise and Fall.
Genre Busting - The band has variously been described as Melodic Death Metal, Metalcore (due to their use of breakdowns and alternating clean/harsh vocals) and Deathcore, and they also have some progressive elements.
Gratuitous French - At the end of Martyr Art, and at the start of Revenge of the Dadaists.
Green Aesop
Humans Are Flawed - A theme in many of their songs (Thank You Pain, among others).
- Alternatively, Humans Are the Real Monsters - Rise and Fall, The Sentient.
Indecipherable Lyrics - On occasion. Alissa is aware of this, and has stated that she thinks it would be cool if someone made a misheard lyrics video of them.
Last-Note Nightmare - In Everybody Wants You (Dead). A Mind Screw-y Subdued Section is followed by a discordant wall of noise with Alissa screaming in the background.
LOLcats - Alissa is a fan.
Look on My Works Ye Mighty and Despair - Discussed in Globus Hystericus.
Master Race - The concept is venomously attacked in Born Dead, Buried Alive.
Metal Scream
Mohs Scale of Rock and Metal Hardness - 8/9.
Morality Ballad - Lots of them.
My Car Hates Me - Their touring van, "the blue hornet", has a habit of breaking down in the worst possible places.
- Tonight Someone Dies - They are going to get their revenge by destroying it on film, and are taking suggestions from fans as to how they should do it.

Simon: "Baseball bats, spiked clubs, grenades, TNT...do you think we could procure a flamethrower?"

Non-Appearing Title
Pimped-Out Dress - Alissa, in Thank You, Pain.
Precision F-Strike
The Power of Friendship - Alissa apparently had some creative difficulties writing for their third album, so Simon stepped in to help out. The results, as can be seen, were awesome.
Protest Song - Again, lots of them.
Serial Escalation- An ongoing competition between Alissa's whiplash vocals, Danny's Epic Riffs and Simon's ludicrously fast drumming.
Sixth Ranger - Pascal Jobin, who joined the band in 2010 (and formerly Chris Adolph, who was their official touring guitarist forr a while).
Soprano and Gravel - In this case, both provided by the same singer.
Subdued Section - Both within the context of the album (Chiaroscuro for Imagined, Swan Lake for Lullabies) and within individual songs (such as Void of Sympathy, Chlorpromazine, and several songs on Prisoners).
Talking to Himself - Thank You Pain
Technician vs. Performer - A mild example: Danny comes up with intricate and technical riffs, to which Paco adds shredding solos.
This Is Sparta - In Trophy Kill ("Fuck! You! Fucking hypocrite!")
Throw It In - The "false start" at the beginning of Eulogies is an out-take that they decided to keep.
Titled After the Song - Inverted with The Tempest, which was the original band name.
Truck Driver's Gear Change - Chlorpromazine, where Alissa's growl rises to a shriek after the bridge.
Walking Disaster Area - An alarming number of their gigs have coincided with various natural disasters.

Alissa: I feel like as a band we are sync'd with nature in the worst way possible.

Your Princess Is in Another Castle - Born Dead Buried Alive sounds like it's about to end on a long, fading guitar chord, then cuts back in and plays for another 30 seconds.