Overview
During Agnostic Front’s early years they were always on shaky legs due to Roger Miret and Vinnie Stigma's mercurial relationship which led to them tempering with the bands sound. Inevitably, as their musicianship continued to improve, the bandmembers such as drummer Louie Beatto and additional guitarist Alex Kinon) began losing some of their raw hardcore sound, and with heavy metal rising in popularity, the group started experimenting with the tightly controlled velocity of thrash metal. This is also the record where lead singer Roger Miret went away from his deep vocals of British Oi! and the shouting instead he experimented with a higher, more metal-influenced voice. [1]
The addition of a second guitarist Alex Kinon led to a more metallic approach, although the songs still had mostly a hardcore sound. One other line-up change was the replacement of Dave Jones by Louie Beatto on drums. The band would further explore the metal sound on their next album, 1987's Liberty and Justice For...
Vinnie Stigma mentioned the sound change in his 2024 autobiography stating: [2]
When it came time to do Cause for Alarm, we were looking for new ideas. By now, we had the same manager as Carnivore, Crumbsuckers, and Whiplash. We’d heard that Louie Beato and Peter Steele from Carnivore were fans of Agnostic Front. I became friends with Louie, and wound up doing backup vocals on the Carnivore albums. He eventually agreed to play drums on our album because we didn’t have a drummer at the time. That’s how Peter became involved with Agnostic Front, through my relationship with Louie. We used to go out to Brooklyn to rehearse, and Pete helped us out with some lyrics. Their involvement changed our sound a lot, with a lot more metal in there, but it still had the energy AF always had. In the end, I’m glad I made that leap, but honestly, it’s not the album I really wanted to or expected to make.
The recording sessions for Cause for Alarm took place at System II Studios in Brooklyn, New York, where the album was both tracked and mixed. [3] The cover art was done by Sean Taggart who later made similar designs on their 2019 album Get Loud!. [4]
Critical reception
Cause For Alarm is viewed as an important album for crossover trash music. Eduardo Rivadavia of AllMusic stated the album “exposed many metal fans to punk rock for the first time, and vice versa, with songs like "Time Will Come," "Toxic Shock," and "Public Assistance" combining metal's tightly wound precision with punk's raw energy surge.” [7]
Ellis Heasley of Distorted sound magazine added that the album “boldly broke down the seemingly insurmountable barriers between two genres.” He also stated that the Metalcore genre owns “heavy and obvious debt to this record.” [8]
In 2005, Cause for Alarm was ranked number 302 in Rock Hard magazine's book The 500 Greatest Rock & Metal Albums of All Time. [9]
Several critics, including Phil Donahue, [10] Jello Biafra and the fanzine Maximum Rocknroll , [11] have criticized Agnostic Front for the controversial lyrics of the song "Public Assistance", written for the band by then-Carnivore frontman Peter Steele which pointed cruel aim at welfare recipients. [12] Steele went on to write a very similar song for his new band Type O Negative named Der Untermensch, which appeared on their album Slow Deep and Hard .
In 2014 the album was inducted into the Decibel Hall of Fame. [13]
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