REVIEW: DOUR - AGORA
- Naomi Colliar Duff
- 21 hours ago
- 3 min read
Vancouver gloomwavers DOUR wrote and recorded their debut album AGORA with an earlier lineup: a trio consisting of Zak Salehian (guitar/vocals), Patrick Hamil (drums), and Gabe Jacob Ferman (bass). After a lengthy battle against substance abuse and depression, Ferman tragically passed away in January this year. He never had the chance to see the album released into the world. Months later, the record is being put out unchanged, exactly as recorded; a document that preserves his creative talents. Gabe’s fingerprints are all over the record and AGORA stands as much a preservation of memory as it is an incredibly strong debut for the band.
The album plays into neo-dystopian themes: technological rises, the shaping of our social downfall as a result, and the gradual loss of identity. These themes sit intertwined with tight defining basslines, drums that roll into each other like crashing waves, and melancholic vocals with a classic post-punk dramatic timbre. Neophiliac begins with rhythmic vocal patterns, a subtle bassline building up in the shadows alongside a clashing of drums. Zak Salehian’s vocals arrive melodic, echoing his gloomy ruminations on living screen-to-screen. Towers follows, trading in the deliberate, darker tones of the opener for speed; fast-paced guitar strums carry us out to a stormy sea. The track is one that defines the record’s themes: rising costs of living and the allure of online presence where that doesn’t matter leads us inwards, into a self-imposed social isolation, which steadily erodes our senses of identity. The only solutions are to return to nature, give ourselves to open air instead. But it’s not that easy, as Salehian sings "I’m left to lean / left to lean / into your tower." We will always be drawn back to that tower.
Laugh is steeped in BAUHAUS-esque guitar rhythms and deep basslines that serve to ensure that track has a spot in any Halloween playlist, while also carrying something of a lighter feel lyrically. It’s not all doom and gloom here - "Laugh when you’re happy," Salehian suggests over a throughline of angular guitar. Mundies feels like a deliberate contrast to its predecessor, a more contemplative track that ties back to the album’s central themes. The people are tired; of barely staying afloat on a poverty line that rises with each passing year, of having to constantly fight an uphill battle for survival, of the steady loss of self that feels inherent to this modern existence. Musically, the track centres its identity around reverberating bass - this one makes Ferman’s talents really stand out.
In Numbers, we’re met by a crashing, sonorous tsunami of guitar, and the constant cliffside rockfall of snare-heavy drum hits. It fades to an end by pitting Salehian’s repeating vocals against the simple backdrop of Hamil’s drums, stripping the track bare so the emotion can seep through. Call is another morose track; Salehian spends the runtime waiting for a call that never comes. Musically, it’s especially cavernous, reverb-heavy with all the classic post-punk stylings. Closer Just Enough Rice is reflective and light on lyrics at points to really let the instrumental breathe. An echo of drums, the haunting of reverbic guitars, and a subtle, yet important, bassline all intertwine into something memorable to cap off this record.
AGORA is not without its faults: at times, the record struggles to find its identity, and some tracks aren’t exactly flashlights in the darkness. If listened to in a oner, there is a tendency for these tracks to blend together. As a whole, however, AGORA is a really strong debut for DOUR; it’s claustrophobic post-punk that drags us out to sea in tempestuous weather, leaving us adrift on the frigid waters of a raging ocean, but occasionally washes us ashore into the inky black of a beachside cave, where melodies echo from cavernous walls and reverberate through the air, leaving no space untouched. There’s a duality to this record, it’s both an opening chapter for DOUR that establishes the gloomy post-punkers as a band that will stand the test of time, and also a closing chapter for Gabe Jacob Ferman, whose legacy is well-and-truly captured in this album. Every time this record gets a spin, he will be there, remembered in the very grooves of his eternal bass.
Score: 8/10
AGORA will be released on 26th June 2026 via Tuna Records.
Words: Naomi Colliar Duff
Photos: DOUR
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