Life of Agony

Life of Agony is an alternative metal band from Brooklyn, New York. The band was formed in the summer of 1989 by singer Mina Caputo, bassist Alan Robert and guitarist Joey Z. After playing with several drummers, they enlisted Type O Negative drummer Sal Abruscato before recording the debut album River Runs Red (1993) after they signed to Roadrunner Records.

According to the group members themselves, they were influenced by bands such as Radiohead, Metallica, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, and Social Distortion. Robert wrote the majority of the music and lyrics and Caputo wrote select ballads, which are mostly about her parents and home life, particularly her mother. ‘A Place Where There’s No Pain’ was written by Abruscato and the other members.

River Runs Red was followed by the more emotional Ugly (1995), but drummer Abruscato left Life of Agony after the accompanying tour. His successor was ex-Pro-Pain & ex-Crumbsuckers drummer Dan Richardson.

After the release of Soul Searching Sun (1997), Mina Caputo departed the band, claiming her heart was no longer in the type of music they produced. After a series of failed attempts to replace her, the band decided they did not want to continue without Caputo. Thus, In 1999, they decided to split.

On the Third and Fourth of January in 2003, the original line-up reunited for two shows at New York’s Irving Plaza. The reunion resulted in several more shows and appearances on European festivals, as well as the recording of Broken Valley (2005), the band’s first new studio album since 1997 and their first on Epic Records. The album was a commercial disappointment for Epic, mainly because Epic installed Extended Copy Protection on the U.S release without the band’s knowledge. The Software exposed the computer to malicious attacks that exploited insecure features of the rootkit software. They were forced to pull the album off of shelves on November 18th, 2005, and parted ways with the band. Caputo later stated “That experience killed this band in a lot of ways. The label didn’t understand who this band was and continually tried to mold us into something we weren’t. Not to mention the illegal spyware they put on our album without our knowledge to try and prevent piracy, and the class-action lawsuit they lost because of it. The court forced them to pull all of our records off the shelf just three months after it was released! The whole thing was a nightmare. We didn’t want to make new music for a long time after that.”

On January 12th, 2016, almost four years after the February 12th interview with Sal Abruscato in which he stated that the band was no more, and he didn’t foresee anything in the future, Life of Agony announced that they were signed to Napalm Records and released A Place Where There’s No More Pain, their first studio album in 12 years, on April 28, 2017.