01. Telemachean Echoes
02. Cascara Sagrada
03. A Charitable View Of Temporary Insanity
04. Whatness Of Allhorse
05. Bellwether And Swine
06. Circe
07. The Twice-Charred Paths Of Musing Disciples
08. Mnesterophonia

I have never read Ulysses, nor indeed any works of James Joyce. However, from what I have ascertained from discussions of his writing style, Agenbite Misery are very much working on the right lines in trying to sonically capture the unorthodoxy of his most famous book.

The New Hampshire trio certainly haven’t played it safe with their ambitions on debut album Remorse Of Conscience. The 8-track effort adapts one chapter from Ulysses in each song, drawing directly from the book’s text for the song lyrics, and attempts to translate the stream-of-consciousness writing into genre-hopping, meandering extreme metal. The record both has two songs over 13 minutes in length, and also two under three minutes, taking very different approaches to the different adaptations. Just like the book, the album is absolutely not designed with accessibility in mind, but the ambition and creativity on display here seems destined to find it a passionate cult audience.

Probably the highest-level genre label that can be used for the album while providing some insight into how it actually sounds is blackened sludge metal, but there are various aspects of the album that this categorization fully overlooks. In that sense, the band’s sound is not dissimilar to acts such as Inter Arma, A Flock Named Murder or Aseitas, three artists that share commonality in being extreme, unpredictable and indefinable. The songs that predominantly fall under the blackened sludge umbrella here (such as “Circe” and “Bellwether And Swine”, the latter of which has shades of High On Fire to it) tend to have surprises up their sleeves, and other tracks lean more heavily into other genres.

The album opens with its shortest song, but “Telemachean Echoes” is not a quiet introductory song. Within less than 90 seconds, it unleashes a torrent of aggression exhibiting traits of hardcore, grindcore, sludge and death metal, making evident early on that abrasion is part of the Agenbite Misery experience. Straight afterwards, “Cascara Sagrada” is initially a sludgier affair, with grim bruising mid-tempo riffs, but hints towards dissonant death metal as more esoteric tones gradually engulf the song, ultimately descending it into a cacophony of discordance.

The sounds explored by the band aren’t wholly malevolent, however; “Whatness Of Allhorse” offers a major shake-up by placing synths in the song’s foreground, and the danceable rhythms and sometimes-spoken vocals lend the song a post-punk/gothic personality that is otherwise absent across Remorse Of Conscience. What’s more, the song also has a touch of post-rock to it, most notably in the evocative washy guitar tremolos shaping the track’s conclusion. “Whatness Of Allhorse” is likely the most unique track on the record, but there are surprises to uncover in more conventional songs. “Circe”, like “Bellwether And Swine”, balances riff-oriented sludge and outbursts of blasting extremity, but its extensive lead guitar meandering from a couple of minutes in drags the vibe to and fro, climaxing around the 5-minute mark with surprisingly lush and spacious psychedelic tones, before descending back into the mire.

However, it is those two long epics that have the biggest impact on the experience of Remorse Of Conscience, and many of its biggest contrasts. “A Charitable View Of Temporary Insanity” flickers back and forth between quieter and louder sounds; opening with relative ambience, it subsequently traverses deathly extremity and trudging doom depression, but also muted spoken word sequences and spacious post-rock lulls. Colossal closer “Mnesterophonia” is similarly quiet to begin with, and it explores some of the most melodic soundscapes across the whole album in its opening minutes before gradually dialling up the discordance and malice, but the final few minutes of the song (and album) are largely filled with distorted noise, giving up altogether on form and structure.

There is a lot to digest across Remorse Of Conscience, and precious little in the form of conventional structures by which to navigate. It’s an album that is designed to be challenging, and for some the barrier to enjoyment may simply be too much, but if you want your metal to be unique, demanding and unbound by norms, you could do far worse than trying out Agenbite Misery’s madcap interpretation of Joyce’s own mad masterpiece.