Agoraphobia (formerly known as Better Off Dead) is a formerly unidentified melodic hardcore/doom metal song by Boston-based band Vivisect. It was first released in 1985 on their promotional demo cassette, Lead Paint Effect, and was subsequently included on their self-titled debut album the following year.
Search History
2010s
The song was first played by DJ Shadow on November 28th, 2011 at the Rise record store in Bristol. The set consisted of songs that he sampled for his album The Less You Know, the Better; it was sampled in the track "Give Me Back The Nights."
On December 7th 2011, the very same set later took place at Rough Trade East in London, England and also at the Boiler Room club in London, England on the same day, where the song was played again.
On June 1st, 2012, The full Boiler Room set was posted to YouTube club's YouTube channel.
The first person to ask who the song was made by was user Danielgray5158 on July 5th, 2019, but the only respond he got was someone else wondering the same thing. The set also had multiple other unidentified songs.
Sampler Spotters is a Facebook group dedicated to sample hunting, owned by the user foreal also known as TheRealness. Users can post a track that has a sample to be identified, and the community can help identify samples. Sample Spotters also has a top 20 samples list, which is a list of 20 samples that are most wanted by members of the group.
On July 21st, 2019, Dr. Jackhammer chose Give Me Back The Nights as a top 20 sample after solving a previous top 20 sample, gaining his own spot on the list. The reason for choosing the track was that there was a clearer and uncut snippet of the wanted samples. One of the samples that were sought after was the bassline sample which was a short loop of the very into of the song.
2020
On June 18th, 2020, user foreal posted a compilation of all the unidentified songs from the Boiler Room set to YouTube. This song played exactly two minutes in.
On April 2nd, 2021, the Boiler Room set was reposted to the r/Lostwave subreddit by user chemthededmem. Other songs on the mix were identified, but this one still wasn't.
On June 21st, 2023, Reddit user tensenukleus made a post on the subreddit r/tipofmytongue titled [TOMT][MUSIC][1979] please help me to find this extremely rare music sample, we've been looking for years claiming he heard it before on the New Jersey based radio station WFMU back in 2005.
Centroid was interested in this lead and decided to contact tensenukleus directly in order to try to accquire more information from the user. According tensenukleus he claims that he heard the song around May to August of 2005, and that it played right after the Fabio's Strength Through Failure program and that it was one of the first songs that played on the next program. He also claims that the song was played in full and was approximately six-seven minutes long.
Tensenukleus gave some descriptions as what the song sounded like. He commented that the song has a long vocal intro with bells and that it is also very heavy and has progressive elements. He also claimed that the song has quite an unique style too and that it also has a crazy guitar and an orchestral feel to it. He also comments that the electric bass is also "nuts" in the bridge of the song with a crazy phaser and has an intense electric guitar solo after the chorus.
Looking at archived schedules, Diane's Kamikaze Fun Machine was the program that came right after Fabio's program. Manual searching was performed by looking through all of the shows that played within the May-August interval, however searches were inconclusive.
Diane, the host of the program, was also contacted about the song, but she said she didn't recognize it. In a last resort effort, Ken Freedman, the manager of WFMU, was also contacted about it, however he was reluctant on opening any links due to a hack that occured on WFMU before.
On September 11th, 2023, DJ Shadow was contacted about the song, but said he said he didn’t remember anything about it, but he believed that the song came off of a metal album from New Jersey.
Over time, the song was reuploaded to YouTube by several other users, such as ip0d69, centroid715, Zumi, No Background, Ofrix, Q, AlianTheObscure, LostwaveFinder, Rocketballboi, S2h, and multiple others, amassing over 6k views.
2024-2025
On January 30th, 2024, four days after Zumi's reupload, DJ Shadow was asked where the vinyl came from during an AMA on his Discord server. He said he didn’t remember and he'd have to think "for a minute", but never followed up.
Up to this point Centroid made a lot of instrument seperations using MVSEP (Music & Voice Separation). Reasoning behind this was to discover any potential leads such as buried instruments or hidden effects that could narrow the search down even more.
After countless of seperations later, a synthesizer pad could be heard from the rips. This was a big lead since if the synthesizer could be identified, a range could be set for a release year of the song.
On July 29th, 2025, Centroid asked about the pad in the VGM & Other Instrument Sources Discord server. Although the server mostly focuses on video game music, they have a channel for non video game music there. The reasoning why this server was chosen is that the members are very keen to be experts with synths and identifying them.
User Majora, who is known for identifying 80's synths, especially in Depeche Mode songs, says the following:
"If it is a recording from the 1980s, the vocal bit is likely using Emulator II factory library disk #12: Voices. The Emulator II library was available from 1984 onwards, which may help whittle down a release year for that lost media track."
Majora also sent an audioclip of the patch. Even though patch was only playing one note, looking at both Centroid's rip and Majora's audioclip through a spectrogram still yielded very similar results. Centroid found a virtual version of the synth and quickly remade the chord that was playing and concluded that the spectrogram yielded a perfect seamless match.
This was a great leap forward as it confirmed that the song was highly likely released between 1984-1989. The synth was also a $8000 synth, so it must have been recorded at a major studio.
On October 23rd, 2025, the song was given a channel on the Fond My Mind Discord Server, along with other unknown song Solo Un Attimo. Both songs being put in the "Other Unknown Songs (1)" category.
On December 3rd, 2025, user Timon Asteria read the documented research posted by Centroid under the Sample Spotters thread and was fascinated by it. The deep research motivated him as it gave him enough leads to have a strong starting point on the search. He said that he'll find it because of the bounty.[1]
Two days later, Timon Asteria identified the song as "Agoraphobia" by Vivisect after combing through post-1984 punk records with similar-looking labels. He eventually located and bought Vivisect's self-titled album, noticing that its vinyl looked almost identical to Centroid’s recreation. After playing the record, he found that the final track on the A-side was the long-sought-after song, and he uploaded it to YouTube.[2][3]
Lyrics
[Part 1]
[Intro]
I sit here, holding my head
I often wonder if I'd be better off dead
[Verse]
Where's my life gone? Where have I gone wrong?
I find myself floating down the gutter
Into the sewer of no return
I feel my soul burn!
[Bridge]
Someone please help me!
Someone please help me!
Or just let me be
[Outro]
Are you stupid?
Can't you see?
I just want to be free
I just want to be free
I just want to be free
[Part 2]
[Verse 1]
Don't come calling at my front door
I don't want to see your face anymore!
I've lost all of my pride
Gonna put up the one that's gonna stay outside!
[Chorus]
Agoraphobia
Chronic agoraphobia
[Verse 2]
When I go out on the street, scared of everybody I meet
If I stay closed in here, I have nothing to fear!
And I don't care what you think!
Don't pass yourself off as a fucking shrink
Because I'm not crazy anymore! Hahaha!
No!
[Verse 3]
It's so bad, locked up in my room
I've encouraged myself and my own private world
I'll treat it until it is back in my mind
That's what all of reality taught me, hey
[Chorus]
Chronic agoraphobia
Chronic agoraphobia
[Outro]
I'm not coming back this time!
No, I'm not coming back this time!
I'm not coming back this time!
No, I'm not coming back this time!
I'm not coming back this time!
I'm not coming back this time!
I'm not coming back this time!
I'm not coming back this time!
I'm not coming back this time!
Vivisect
Vivisect was a garage punk, heavy metal, and doom metal band from Boston, Massachussetts, USA.
The band consisted of members Mark Kennedy (vocals, saxophone), Tom Vesce (guitar, vocals), Paul Brymer (bass, vocals) and Tom Maffucci (drums, percussion, piano).
In 1985, they released their debut EP, the promotional demo cassette Lead Paint Effect.[4]
This was followed in 1986 by their self-titled debut album, Vivisect.[5]
The band likely disbanded later that same year.
Album's tracklist
- War Criminals
- Mercy Killing
- Value King
- Playground Robbery
- Agoraphobia
- Vigilante Vice
- Strict-9
- Hermonculus
- Migs Over Boston
- Burger Christ
- Reagan Spawn
Trivia
Agoraphobia is the fear of entering open or crowded places like public transport, concerts, being in open or enclosed spaces.
Gallery
