{"id":456274,"date":"2026-02-05T21:37:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-05T21:37:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/456274\/"},"modified":"2026-02-05T21:37:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-05T21:37:08","slug":"agenbite-misery-remorse-of-conscience-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/456274\/","title":{"rendered":"Agenbite Misery – Remorse of Conscience Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Anyone who\u2019s brushed against James Joyce\u2019s modernist classic Ulysses has almost certainly encountered the phrase \u201cremorse of conscience\u201d before. A pivotal theme of the novel, remorse of conscience refers to more than mere guilt over a perceived ethical failure but the misery inflicted by it, its weight and torment. In the days leading up to receiving Remorse of Conscience, the independent debut from New Hampshire\u2019s genre-blending Agenbite Misery, a record informed by Ulysses and \u201csteeped in grief, alienation and the search for meaning in modern life,\u201d I was experiencing that eponymous turmoil myself. Why? Because Agenbite Misery, along with bassist Cam Netland and drummer\/primary vocalist Adam Richards, is the creative baby of guitarist\/synth guy Sam Graff, AMG\u2019s very own Samguineous Maximus. Promising as fair and impartial a review as I could muster to both my colleague and my merciless taskmasters, one terrifying question bit at me relentlessly between accepting the task and receiving the promo: \u201cWhat if it sucks?\u201d<\/p>\n

Among the myriad sub-genres influencing Remorse of Conscience, Agenbite Misery\u2019s bread and butter is a complementary fusion of sludge and black metal. Songs like \u201cBellwether and Swine\u201d and \u201cMnesterophonia\u201d swing between second-wave blackened intensity and a washing of Acid Bath grime, while \u201cTelemachean Echoes\u201d wrecks house through hardcore-flexing sludge brutality and \u201cCirce\u201d bestows an atmospheric dreariness similar to Hexrot. This works: Agenbite Misery\u2019s sludge influence adds weight to their blackened riffing while their black metal influence helps keep their sludge from plodding too long. Elsewhere, Agenbite Misery throw their weight around in \u201cCascara Sagrada\u201d with Portalesque disso-death depravity, engage in melancholic electronic atmospherics on \u201cThe Twice-Charred Paths of Musing Disciples\u201d and get downright danceable Crippling Alcoholism-style on the post-rock, synth-heavy \u201cWhatness of Allhorse,\u201d which sounds like something Blade would kill a roomful of vampires to. Remorse of Conscience rarely sits still, and with Agenbite Misery\u2019s expert songwriting everything they try comes together cohesively.<\/p>\n

\ufeffRemorse of Conscience by Agenbite Misery<\/a><\/p>\n

Balance is the key to Agenbite Misery and Remorse of Conscience\u2019s success. Every song is crafted with superb dynamism, whether it be in \u201cCirce\u201d\u2018s shifting speeds, \u201cMnesterophonia\u201d\u2018s oscillating sense of airiness and crushing oppression or \u201cWhatness of Allhorse\u201d\u2018s gradual escalation of heaviness. Vocally, Agenbite Misery mix it up between the three bandmates with shrieks, roars, squeals (\u201cBellwether and Swine\u201d), barks (\u201cTelemachean Echoes\u201d) and (competently performed!) spoken-word passages (\u201cA Charitable View of Temporary Sanity,\u201d \u201cWhatness of Allhorse\u201d), suiting whatever mood the songs demand. The pinnacle of Remorse of Conscience\u2019s balancing act is \u201cA Charitable View of Temporary Sanity,\u201d which across its over-thirteen-minute runtime swings from thoughtful, quiet bass arpeggios against sparse guitar notes to titanic doom riffs, from funeral dirge tempos to double-time death marches. Sometimes quietly disturbing, sometimes manically depressive, variety in style and approach keeps Remorse of Conscience from ever being boring.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Remorse of Conscience remains compelling through its entirety because of Agenbite Misery\u2019s greatest balancing act: blending immediacy within slow-burn constructions. Despite the thematic density derived from its source material, Remorse of Conscience opens with a simple rager in \u201cTelemachean Echoes\u201d and loads \u201cWhatness of Allhorse\u201d and \u201cCirce\u201d with hooky synth and guitar leads respectively, affording the album casual listening appeal. Then there are Agenbite Misery\u2019s epics in \u201cA Charitable View of Temporary Sanity\u201d and \u201cMnesterophonia,\u201d which eschew conventional song structure for slow, Isis-like post-metal waves and sludgy, noise-rock menace, easy to become lost in as a listener. Both modes keep the pacing of Remorse of Conscience fresh, and the mix of short songs (\u201cTelemachean Echoes,\u201d \u201cThe Twice-Charred Paths of Musing Disciples\u201d) with longform ones further dispels any threat of monotony creeping in. Both song-wise and album-wide, Remorse of Conscience is not only a rich, thoughtful exploration of guilt and turmoil but a really, really fun record, too.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat if it sucks?\u201d What if, indeed. Having spent so much time with this record, my old concern of winding up disliking Remorse of Conscience was replaced with the new anxiety over whether I\u2019d gas up Agenbite Misery and Sam too much and come off as committing inter-AMG favoritism. To combat that fear: \u201cWhatness of Allhorse\u201d and \u201cMnesterophonia\u201d get a bit long in the tooth, \u201cBellwether and Swine\u201d ends a bit anticlimactically and the drum kicks and snares could be much punchier overall. But this is water under the bridge for a great album defined by adventurous songcraft and deep atmospheres. Even if you\u2019ve never read a word of Joyce\u2019s Ulysses, Agenbite Misery and Remorse of Conscience is worth the effort. It\u2019s a lot easier to finish than Ulysses, at the very least.<\/p>\n

Rating: Great
DR: 7 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps MP3
Label: Independent
Websites: agenbitemisery.com<\/a> | agenbitemisery.bandcamp.com<\/a> | ampwall.com\/a\/agenbitemisery<\/a>
Releases Worldwide: February 6th, 2026<\/p>\n

\n\tGive in to Your Anger:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Anyone who\u2019s brushed against James Joyce\u2019s modernist classic Ulysses has almost certainly encountered the phrase \u201cremorse of conscience\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":456275,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[43409,35704,187120,187121,10734,187122,23275,49,48,158539,75,186515,142477,341,182861,87576,34267,187123,208,209,52833,52834],"class_list":["post-456274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-43409","tag-4-0","tag-acid-bath","tag-agenbite-misery","tag-american-metal","tag-avante-garde-black-metal","tag-black-metal","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-crippling-alcoholism","tag-entertainment","tag-feb26","tag-hexrot","tag-music","tag-noise-rock","tag-portal","tag-post-metal","tag-remorse-of-conscience","tag-review","tag-reviews","tag-self-released","tag-sludge-metal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=456274"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456274\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/456275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=456274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=456274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=456274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}