[Album Review] FORCEFED HORSEHEAD/SHAVING THE WEREWOLF (Split EP) + AGENBITE MISERY (LP).
There’s just so much got-danged stuff flooding the inbox that I honestly have no way of foreseeably covering it all!
Ergo, I thought I’d try something a little different (which might become a thing ongoing, depending on how well this fits) - two album reviews for the price of one!
Do be sure to check out the included media and artist links for Norwegian grind-punk enthusiasts Forcefed Horsehead and mathy powerviolence purveyors Shaving The Werewolf, as well as everything-bucket blackened doomers Agenbite Misery (US).
Without further ado, our mutual time is precious so let’s get stuck straight into the musical fine-tooth combing of two fantastic releases!
Peace, Love and Miserably Forcefeeding Werewolves Horse-Heads - Brady.
[Split - EP]: FORCEFED HORSEHEAD/ SHAVING THE WEREWOLF (Norway) - From Horrid To Worse
Label: None (Self/Independent Release)
Release Date: 13th February, 2026
Sometimes, the allure of a well-written PR promo is just too good for me to pass up. Blackened this, cavernous that, wistfully progressive and lilting above soaring ethereal musical apocrypha. There’s a myriad of talented copywriters and reps out there constantly vying for the attentional pull of forever-overwhelmed music-press outlets’ inboxes.
I’m a simple man, though. For all my posturing, sneering and general classically-metalhead autistic snobbery - I’m very easily lured in by the promise of a grinding, grooving, rapid-fire fun-time. Thus, when the brief notes a snappy split between Norwegian grind-punk and math-core-ish powerviolence? I stand to attention. I click that goddamned album stream link and see if such an enticement lives up to expectations.
Often with bands like Forcefed Horsehead, the lineup is classically a trio of bassist, drummer, single guitarist - and sometimes not even a bassist (boo - I get it, but boo). You’d be easily further misled down that genre-trope garden path with the intro to ‘Promisebreaker’, with a simple repetitive chordal refrain introducing the EP proper.
It’s thankfully not long, then, before sheer controlled-chaos erupts from the speakers. Audun Mehl’s vocal delivery carries a satisfying heft to it, if a bit monotonal in delivery throughout. Bursting forth with a gnarled roar that would sit as comfortably on an Agnostic Front record as it would, say, the throaty roars of post-metal Swedes Burst, I’m reminded of the extra viscera with which Scandinavians do their fast and heavy. Things launch into a swirling miasma of blackened hardcore and thick, chunky death metal riffage, demonstrating the creative prowess of guitarists Rikard Jonsson and Patrick Wivegh. Not to be undersold, the drumwork of Thomas Godiksen and the thudding bass-work of Arve Barsnes complements a snappy, gnarling intro.
It’s a pretty great starter, but I’m also feeling just shy of the urgency and frantic nature implied by the promotional brief. That’s when ‘The Will of Many’ (easily my favourite contribution by the first band to this EP) beats the door down, blasting the room in feverish sprays of d-beat, snapping snare, whirling and spasmodic chord progressions and an increased high-register bite to the shrieks. Interspersed with blastbeats and some very Every Time I Die switch-up between single note groove-riff and devil-may-care riff trickery, it’s a track that evokes both two-step-filled warehouse hardcore gig and dingy dive-bar grindcore bill alike. The fact this is the second longest track on the Split at 3 minutes, 39 seconds also allows for some fun interplay between ballistic drum-fills and tremolo-runs, punching in and out between a more anthemic chorus riff. Really solid.
Third track ‘Keelhaul’ has some humorously screechy high-pitched shrieks, continuing almost like an extension of the prior track. Feeling like I’ve got the band plugged style-wise as we bounce around some freakish knife-fight of Cancer Bats-esque groove and more technical, mathy blasting, it’s around the one-minute mark that the insanity truly begins. Riffs peel into a feverish ricochet of extreme-metal tropes, cascading walls of brutish discordance. Arve’s prominence in this track is tangible, and it’s the grunting, relentless rumble amidst riff and drumwork chaos that is demonstrative of a band able to sink into multiple pockets. Nice.
That’s over as rapidly as it started, though. We’ve no time! There are ‘Cryptids’ about, and this track continues with much the same ethos of melding math-adjacent schizoid songwriting, deathgrind fury and stompin’, chunky breaks. Even those sparse moments of relative ease feel chock-full of notes, a traffic intersection of musicians playing four-way chicken whilst Audun brings a level of vocal intensity I’m clamouring to hear more on a full release.
I’ll admit that on first casual listen, the first act’s contribution didn’t have staying power. I’d popped this one on whilst driving, and the fractured attention had mostly anchored to the bouncier single-string groove riffage strewn atop the more furious elements of their sound. With more listens, the extremity-onion just keeps revealing itself - for a band to layer complexity in their sound in a ten-minute runtime is super impressive.
Perhaps it’s the uptick in pure, unrestrained insanity purveyed by our second Split contributor Shaving The Werewolf that also overshadowed the prior band on first listen. Primacy effect is a thing, and it’s a thing employed everywhere from marketing and political propaganda to the education system - for good reason.
Suitably primed and pumped from the first half, it’s no surprise the gnarliest is saved for last on this Split. ‘Smoking The Crack of Dawn’ begins with an immediate blackened belch that brings Aura Noir/Black Breath to mind, vocalist Ottar wavering between this raspy shriek and a very tried-and-true hardcore frontman snarl. Riffage begins with a stomp that feels almost mid-tempo following Forcefed’s offering, but things start to get… nutty. Squealing and atonal, effects-laden soloing from Snorre atop trilling snare from Kenneth that breaks out into off-key piano and swing-time? Did I mention Vegar is here, and he’s playing both trumpet and synthesizer? It’s like Elton John smoked inhuman amounts of PCP and asked Snorre and Alexander (Bass) to just stand over there thumping roots and palm-mutes hard whilst taking a hit off the glass saxophone. The gnarled screech at the end ties things up in a Bad Acid Trip. I could see these guys being a good fit onboard a System of A Down self-titled LP tour - were they not so liable to scare every single one of their fans.
‘Affordable Victims’ echoes sentiments from the title about timeliness - From Horrid To Worse is certainly a useful moniker for the recent Epstein-related media firestorm. And I’m just going to have to keep plague-doctoring it with my depictions here, folks. The only slightly atonal sheen of the synth accompanying a jagged back-and-forth chordal slide lends further into this feeling of black-and-roll dementia. It’s like someone fed Kvelertak a whole bottle of their grand-dads’ anticholinergic Parkinson’s medication and stood back mirthfully. Back-up vocals with battering chants, puncturing drum-fills and synth, carefully prescribed thumps on the bass, all encircling guitar-work that goes wherever the fuck it pleases. There’s a couple of isolated riffs that feel nothing short of terminal, flu-inflected and uncomfortable. Ergo, for me as a listener, fun times. The threat of a straightforward moment as our orator screams about the “difference between clients and cattle” descends into further sickly buffets of unexpected arpeggiation, chords and ever-shifting tempos. It’s like listening to yourself drowning in quicksand… in five directions.
After entombment in discordant nuttiness, ‘Complaining in Body Language’ offers a fairly straightforward run of death-metal riffing. Alluring the listener with false promises, we then cop an uptick in the spikey off-key chords, fingers on frets likely as mashed as your average jazz virtuoso. There’s a clever interplay between near spoken-word, snarled roar and absolutely fierce, frantic vocal delivery here. The fact this is blended like mathcore spew into an on-off clash of riff-wall and skronky, Hail The Sun/Fall of Troy style squawking guitar and a clear, trundling bass warble just adds another layer of insanity. You’re left wondering exactly how the hell Kenneth is both constantly battling righting the ship whilst inflecting his own chaos, embellishing the scaffold with abuse across the kit throughout the track (and indeed the Split).
‘Man Song’ reaches for epic closure, trilling and high-tempo basslines clashing with a wash of sci-fi synth sheen, sickly vibrato warbles, clattering toms and a structure feeling more intense and urgent by the moment. Everything elevates in pitch and register as one, vocals, guitar, cymbals and bass reaching tinnitus-inducing peak before producing an evil grin and pulling back for a chant-heavy breakdown - pretty much the only straightforward riff on the entire EP, sending out From Horrid To Worse in a distortion-laden, feedback-washed wall of final exhalation. Or so you’d think. Nope! Propelling themselves from the lurch, the band launch into their most frenzied mix of mathcore and black metal, ending with abruptness that leaves only the stomach butterflies in the ensuing silence.
Very promising split from both of these acts! Overall, I’d honestly have preferred more length and ergo more opportunity to hear the full creative range from both acts. I’m left wondering if a full-length from either may be almost too chaotic for most, an assumption I earnestly hope is proven right with future material from these absolute nutcase Norwegian noise-makers.
If you’re like me and feel just as home getting down to Dillinger Escape Plan and Ion Dissonance as you would do for fastcore, black-and-roll and Mr Bungle - this is a split for you.
LINKS:
Forcefed Horsehead:
Shaving The Werewolf:
Link to EP Stream, via Youtube
AGENBITE MISERY - REMORSE OF CONSCIENCE (LP)
Label: None/Independent Release
Release Date: 6th February, 2026
I deliberately chose the above split to be included alongside this full-length for a few reasons. One, I feel the absurdist insanity and sheer speed is a great primer to the (VERY) relative wind-down experience by nestling into Remorse of Conscience’s pocket, afterwards.
Second, I noticed when playing the two back-to-back, it’s this album that provided the most unsettling and harrowing experience of all three.
No joke, folks. First few listens of this album were experienced from an increasingly-crammed folder on my smartphone, again whilst driving. Driving acts as its’ own form of stimulus-control for me where albums are concerned; the attentional capacity required to maintain safety on the road and focus on the music leaves very little wiggle-room for the typically noisy interference provided by good friend ADHD.
Agenbite Misery, an experimental trio from New Hampshire, are similar to the above split-EP artists too. Specifically, in the complete lack of care and traditional adherence to ‘well, we’ve written a track largely in this genre, so that’s where the aesthetic stays’. More and more over time, I’m particularly noticing hardcore, black metal and doom infesting a greater number of releases as globalisation, the strive for originality and just trying new things expands your average release’s palette.
This is, in fact, where any comparisons across releases end. Circling back to the above example of my first listen, anecdote time. Driving back from Melbourne following a Gig Review the night before, I’d been both too souped-up on adrenaline, caffeine and my own incessant cognitive nattering to sleep that well. The brief promised an interesting and eclectic mix of sludge, doom, black metal, hardcore, prog and psychedelia, which typically is a great antithetical to that hangover-like torpor experienced from terrible attempts at sleep.
That mental state and my own preconceptions actually put me in poor stead for absorbing Remorse of Conscience fully. As an idiot who will put on things like Khanate, Indian, Meth Drinker and similarly caustic, barren, lyrically and musically hopeless bands ‘for fun’ and ‘to relax’, I’ll freely admit I had to turn this album off on first listen - it was just too much.
And that, Dear Reader, is exactly what makes this album so great. It’s a challenging listen, even if you wear listening to gnarly music like some neurodivergent/metalhead badge of inner pride. It’s a challenge not so much in sonic intensity as it is an ever-shifting landscape of harrowing musical plains. And it’s the melodic moments peppered all throughout that seem only to exacerbate the feelings of emotional dissonance, discomfort - and coolness.
We are constantly inundated with marketing promises about the supposed lack of safety with new releases. Descriptors like cavernous, haunting and otherworldly are now commonplace, as though heavy musicians are busily concocting some alchemical craft alongside their Eldritch Gods invoked to the recording studio by ritual.
Precisely why ‘Telemachan Echoes’ is a gut-punch to expectations. It’s instead a rollicking, brief, sharp stab of blackened hardcore, reminiscent of the above acts and also fellow Australians Siberian Hell Sounds. It gnarls in a very brief, defiant shriek of intensity, betraying both the promo brief and our own expectations in one fell swoop.
Don’t judge a book by its’ cover, of course. We all know the truism.
But there’s also something to be said about the nature of visual art as part of the entire musical package, and the oil-painting styled artwork of the album cover I feel is a deliberate subversion when paired with this fast-paced expulsion of blackened-grind air. For me, the cover-art implies a certain Inanimate Existence tech-death proggy styled experience, and thus copping this brief barn-burner intro is offputting… but not in a bad way. Just completely unhinged from assumptions made prior.
Likewise, the production. This is a deliberately grit-laden affair, and so many recent releases paired with that classical-Renaissance painting feel are typically followed through by music that is equally tidy, studious and clean in terms of final mix. That is certainly not the case here and, whilst I feel a level of sharpening up the bass-clack and some distinction in the guitars would be beneficial here, I’ll add that any tweaks and dials to that end would only need to be very incremental.
As it is, the foggy ash-cloud styled production does, in fact, also lend a lot to the overall feeling of depressive, despairing sorrow punctuated with moments of fiery anger - and mournful longing. You don’t get that broad an emotional array on the first track, though. Nah, the opener is pure caustic catharsis. ‘Cascada Sangara’ is where we see the emotive expansion over time, but before lulling you into yet another sense of unearned false security first.
Ah. Doomy riffs rolling on thunderous drum-and-bass hills, with thanks to the flavourful work of Cam Netland (Bass/Vocals) and Adam Richards (Drums/Vocals). Sam Graff (Guitar/Vocals) deploying a more measured, doomy chug on the axe. Things take a slightly post-punk turn with some of the arpeggios and key changes, same with the tempo. Cool, but not unexpected - I had also recently just finished binging the absolute hell out of darkened-New-Wave-meets-death-metal release by Floating, so I wasn’t rattled by the stylistic shift. But there’s an innate creepiness to how the track progresses, a constant flirtation with atonal and improper additions in small, punctured beats throughout. Despite a restrained, spoken-word filled sluggishness and the very traditional black metal delivery, there’s some near intangible cadence that isn’t in your face, but grows throughout. A guitar solo feeling like Fredrik Thordendal sessioning for Mithras before blasting into straight-up fuck-you atonal chords and pummelling drums only helps propel the unease throughout the tracks’ latter half.
And if you thought things were already feeling a bit strange? Strap the fuck in, bucko. You’ve got nearly fourteen minutes of exploratory horror to try and reconcile with third track ‘A Charitable View of Temporary Insanity’. A subdued, funeral-doom feel for the intro, we’re carried through subtle harmonics, repetitive and moody bass-arpeggio with soundscapes of thudding footsteps, seagulls and oceanic ambience as spoken-word plays between sporadic touches of the cymbals. Piercing feedback wails in painful wails, and the guts just absolutely drop out of this thing like a lightsabred taun-taun on Hoth. A contorted, devilishly-evil grin appears on my face as they Bring Back The Riff But Much, Much Slower. There’s a painful slowness and deliberation for a few measures, built upon by double-bass before being backed off with ringing chords and drum-chokes. The bassist conceals themselves under the punch of this slow-motion staccato, vocals gnarling with intensity. And then, like none of that shit ever happened, we suddenly get this hella Alexisonfire/post-black styled clean arpeggio over more spoken word, the chords leaning into a more traditional doom minor weightiness in between. Ian Stainthorpe would approve the hell out of this My Dying Bride section, but he’d nick off pretty soon once things lurch intro a more propelled swarm of blackened death metal fury.
This is only the halfway-mark, by the way. Things just constantly flirt with this notion of building to something that frustratingly never eventuates. Instead, the track drops into isolated vocal howls that sound like all-natural amputation, free of anaesthetic relief, colliding now and then with this soupy, martial, drawling riff. The intensity of the pained vocal shrieks only intensifies as feedback builds, supported by meagre rhythm section before a very smacked-out black metal riff, back into more of these strangely relevant post-rock moments. We see the purported post-punk influence entering slowly here, but doing so in decrepit and disfigured fashion, building to a truly gross and caustic faux-crescendo. It’s unsettling, in an awesome way.
‘Whatness of Allhorse’ momentarily forgives the prior tracks for their emotional crimes, inviting you along for a lovely goth-coded foot-stomp. A dancey, synth-laden introduction with shimmering dark synth, half-murmured vocals and punchy, swingy rhythm implying a darkened warehouse full of black-clad MDMA-enjoyers stomping in their Doc Martins. The build feels subdued in the mix and deliberately-so. Nevertheless, the consistent pacing helps the head-bobbing, as does the Nine Inch Nails inspired punchy chord progressions. I’m really enjoying the toe-tapping throwback to goth clubs of the 80’s and 90’s here, the industrial flair not at all at odds with the blackened miserliness of the prior track. Given what’s transpired prior, though, I’m fully expecting some haymaker swing into a more furious blackened death metal/doom section. The fact this never eventuates is both eyebrow-raising and dread-inducing, and I feel deliberately so on both counts. They know you know it ain’t going to stay as composed, familiar and downright butt-shakin’ as this, and they relish in the sport by never fully unleashing heavy metal horror on you across the track.
And can I say, the pure 2000s/2010s post-metal crescendo with which the track plays out its’ ending is just truly epic, and serves as quite a useful distraction against your supposed preparedness. Disjointing the feedback and black-metal infused doominess of the preceding and following tracks works superbly well.
It’s no surprise that the ensuing track was delivered as a single - ‘Bellwether and Swine’ acts as the most homeopathic distillation of the bands’ vision thus far. No prosaic passages are needed for this one, it does exactly as says on the tin. Lurching with a Mastodon-ian riff-heft, it’s an unrelenting marital blaster that simply vacillates between sheer blackened fury and sludge griminess for the most part. That would be the case, were it not for all the clever flecks of semi-atonal guitar flourishes in sections where modern metal bands usually provide a cursory melodic respite. Not the case here; aside from some thick post-metal riff moments, there are few avenues for aural reprieve here. A disquieted and brief interlude towards the songs’ midsection is about all you get, a lonely fretted refrain as the songs’ crescendo builds over a simplistic riff-wall. The venemous urgency with which the lyrics are caterwauled in half-roar, half-blackened screeches by multiple vocalists briefly evokes Eyehategod, but all sense of NOLA sensibility is washed away in a final, furious black metal blast.
Link to Music Video for Single ‘Bellwether and Swine’ via Youtube:
‘Circe’ instead throws in a more traditionally metal trope, increasing the intensity factor across the board in a stomping, roaring, cavernous wall of subterranean black metal. All the tropes are here with those repetitive arpeggiations, distal shrieks and screams, more restrained drumwork roiled into blasting sections. Abbath himself would giggle with glee at the narky leads, Scandinavian blasting sections and up-tempo furor towards the tracks’ mid-section. The deliciously Gothenburg styled brief soloing adds to the sudden identity crisis, this American sludge crew suddenly hanging out with early Swedes before departing back into classic black metal slow-burn riff tropes. Of all tracks on the LP, this one’s the most tried-and-true in terms of format, and it’s an impressive gauntlet through their faster blackened death metal lexicon. The simple repetitive haranguing at the end gets almost overbearing and yet again, I find myself thinking that’s purely intentional.
Particularly with the soft, ethereal synth-wash opening follow-up track ‘The Twice-Charred Path of Musing Disciples’. It’s an electronica-infused haze that serves to provide a false sense of rest, and an actually-needed bout of musical reprieve. Thus far, the band have tampered with tempo, but it’s all been couched in minor keys, discordance and fury. Thus, this brief celestial interlude really does help as a final emotional checkpoint before things get truly devastating.
For our final track, ‘Mnestrophonia’ pushes all knobs and dials cranked hard towards to notch labelled ‘Oranssi Pazuzu on excessive amounts of heroin’. Sluggishly ambling with a repetitive bassline, methodical drumming and vaguely-post-metal chord warbles, the track quickly broadens into the most expansive tonal room yet. A cathedral of stoic drumming, pained screams and creeping chord progressions, it’s both the mix and songwriting that give the track vastness in the heavier moments. Things drop back into that more sombre, uncomfortably sparse but melodic progression. A slightly sickly exercise in Damnation-era Opeth, punctuated with droning, blackened riff-walls, there’s additive effects-drenched leads the second time around. Around the midway mark we get a riff so traditional-doom it feels cookie-cutter, albeit with the bands’ own brand of rhythmic and temporal fuckery. Once more, it feels like a deliberate insert to shift any sense of coherence in the narrative, and works well when droning back into the riff-wall pocket. Sheer walls of fuzz-laden distortion, noise and feedback just straight up say the noisy part out loud for almost longer than what’s bearable, lashing you whilst tied to aural shackles with droning, aimless noise.
This continues for long enough to be nigh-unbearable, and actually pretty challenging to stick with. I really had to grit my teeth and persist as eventually, the skeletal structure of mournful funeral doom re-enters with a plodding rhythm-section. There’s not too much payoff here, though - we’re treated to a malicious wail of playful chords and leads, toms rolling in ever-tightening coils over a bass thumping along, punching through the noise with jagged spires. Sure, things build towards a crescendo… of sorts, I guess. Extra slides and lilts on the guitar, some deliberately noisy shredding, a final battering-ram of discordant blackened doom metal to the refrains of “Yes! Yes I Will!” - and then it’s over. It’s done.
Phew.
Now, those of you posted up in some cosy UK winter bar, or down here in a summer-sesh beer garden read on your smartphone, both keenly propping up your dog-eared Chuck Bukowski novel in the hopes that bespectacled librarian’s-assistant-coded gal who looks like she might have a Masters in Anthropology peeps you casually philosophising over a pint? You hipster dudes are in luck… but you’re also not.
You’re in luck because haven’t explored lyrical themes yet but are about to. I left off this part primarily because the caustic and haunting edifice of musical trickery takes primacy on first (and subsequent) listen/s. ‘Agenbite Misery’ itself is a throwback to 14th Century English devotional text “Agenbite of Inwit”. Translated to its’ meaning verbatim, it becomes “again-bite of inner wit”, which is modernised by the very title of this album - Remorse of Conscience. Clever, huh? Such a double-entendre might score you brownie-points over neat whiskey or whatever your beeswax-beard-oiled ass clamours for to appear the timeless modern genteelman.
Adding yet another layer to the literary metaphor upon which the album is built, lyrically, Agenbite Misery’s latest album is actually a musical adaptation of James Joyce’s Ulysses, widely considered itself a masterful early-20th-Century Irish reinterpretation of Homer’s epic, Odyssey. Double-whammy for more pseudo-intellectual point-scoring.
Given the novel’s final chapter is delivered in a frantic rush of stream-of-consciousness by ‘protagonist’ Leopold Bloom, the final refrains of accepting “Yes! Yes I will!'“ echo Penelope’s final accepting “Yes” as the novel’s closing line proper. Having read this novel near twenty years ago as part of grumble-heavy high school English, I can’t profess to be an up-to-date expert on the literature.
What I do remember of the novel (aside from it being written in linguistic style reflective of the time and ergo a bit dense on the teen-brain) is its’ unceasing unease, primarily employed through the lens of Joyce taking off in, frankly, whatever stylistic directions he damn well pleases. To be honest, it’s a pretty goddamned emotionally dense and confusing novel. It was as antithetical to traditional advice around what constitutes a good book then as Remorse of Conscience is defiant of what makes a good album now. You think yourself familiarised with it by way of this recent glut of everything-bucket extreme-metal/hardcore/post-punk crossover acts, but this one’s got a similar idiomatic feel to Ulysses in terms of being user-unfriendly yet enjoyable.
In both cases, the novelist and current band in question both took massive risks and thought nothing of it. The resulting dysphoria left in the artists’ consumer is palpable and powerful, and both are worthy of high praise as no-holds-barred creative explorations in emotional discomfort, technique and thematic heft.
Now where I think you might not be in luck, is if you’ve bragged your way to bringing said girl-next-door back to your place for coffee to show her Remorse of Conscience. Do that, and you might just have someone bashing down the door in fright, looking desperately for the nearest fire escape, sirens ensuing not long afterward.
Perhaps even more unsettling is the notion she might enjoy it too. In that case, I have no idea what the night holds for you - just be brave.
As for the rest of us, there’s no need to be versed in self-conscious literary pseudo-intellectual pretence. Complex as this album is overall, it’s garishly in your face, imposing and stark. Truly a special listening experience if you smugly feel yourself above being rattled by modern metal, Remorse of Conscience will put you in your place. Which is precisely why you’ll go back for more.
LINKS:
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Peace, Love and Grindcore - Brady.