No credited artist.

Style: Dissonant black metal, avant-garde black metal (harsh vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Deathspell Omega, Blut Aus Nord, Krallice
Country: United States
Release date: 28 August 2026

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The title of Agonanist’s second full-length record, The Spirit of Gravity, sent me into a spiraling book-report-due-at-midnight scramble to explain what the hell the Spirit of Gravity actually is. Without relaying the whole plot of Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra¹, one segment features the Spirit of Gravity as a philosophical representation of all the burdens of modern life that crush our spirit, and Zarathustra—the main character—fights against it, calling it the devil. We mustn’t be weighed down by the Spirit of Gravity, yet outliers tackle it differently: a Californian one-man band is channeling all of this solemnity and burden into a bright white star, and dangling it overhead. I must be like Zarathustra and fight back, but it’ll be hard: thirty-seven minutes of dissonant black metal await our clash. 

Tyler Henthorn, the man commanding Agonanist, isn’t alone in this war. Accompanying him arrives a solid line-up of session musicians: Andrew Lee of Houkago Grind Time’s anime-themed goregrind fame² assists with vocals; Gorguts’ current bassist, Colin Marston, contributes his standard (sadly inaudible) five-string skills; and Kévin Paradis aids in drum work, adding Agonanist to his ever-expanding list of studio efforts. Even with this cast list of virtuosos, Henthorn tackles three instruments which amalgamate with his fellow instrumentalists to create one headache of an atmosphere. No, seriously—after the first run-through, I felt noticeably fatigued, and post-relisten, I truly felt the Spirit of Gravity totally encumbering me, even with only under forty minutes of music at its disposal. I was even hesitant to give it a second listen because as soon as I’d hit play, the intro of “Effacement” would assault me with a heinously clangorous blast that, as I’ll mention soon enough, maintains atonality exceptionally well. Sadly, the songs frequently run into strange artistic choices.

The most common and blatant weakness is the pacing and length of any given track. Dissonant and atmospheric black metal (two genres that are arguably intrinsically boring) thrive on elongated song structures. The Spirit of Gravity’s nine songs average a solid five minutes, which is way too short for such aimlessness. Songs, and even segments within them, start and stop abruptly. After the muddy, bleak opening track, you’re ripped into the technically proficient black metal attitude of “Cry of Cages,” and after that, the spacey ambience of “The Gateway.” This pattern persists throughout the tracklist, flinging me from one environment to the other without warning. All of a sudden, I’m juked into record highlight “The Gateway”, reaching DSBM-levels of vocal straining and waves of night-sky-sounding keyboards (courtesy of Henthorn) crashing and rebuilding merely to crash again. Unfortunately, this specific feeling runs only four minutes, because Agonanist needs to ditch what it’s doing and move along, I guess. The transition between “For Mia”—a relatively “tame” piece by Agonanist’s standards—and “Disruption and Decay” is best described by the latter’s name. Mia is one lucky gal, as the whole team, most notably Paradis on drums, plays its ass off over a wall of atmosphere. Paradis handles the technicality of dissonant black metal extremely well, yet, as usual, whatever song he plays on falls short of a suitable finish. 

“Collapse,” the eleven-minute closer, should be the light at the end of the disorienting, dimly lit, and scarily loud tunnel. It has the space to develop and undergo many changes, but one change in particular harms its strength. After an ambient component in the middle third, the production submerges itself underwater and proceeds to sound lo-fi for the remaining duration. The song can be split into three acts, essentially: regularly unorthodox metal, the aforementioned calmness, and the succeeding chaos. During the beginning sequence, which, in essence, sounds like the rest of the album (a dissonant black metal migraine), expect chaotic, atonal techniques used in sporadic time signatures. While each musician involved in The Spirit of Gravity performed to the nth degree, they fail to bridge the moments of genuinely impressive metal smoothly enough to be fully appreciated.

Maybe a three-epic-song record would suit Agonanist’s needs instead of an eight-fragment compilation. Despite a much-needed break, I fought and successfully overcame the star of white, but Henthorn and his crew didn’t go down easily. In Zarathustra’s own words, “Come, let us kill the Spirit of Gravity³!”

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Recommended tracks: The Gateway, For Mia, Collapse
You may also like: Exitium Sui, The Ruins of Beverast, Wormlust
Final verdict: 5/10

Label: Transylvanian Recordings

Agonanist is:
– Tyler Henthorn (everything)
With guests:
– Andrew Lee (vocals)
– Colin Marston (keyboards)
– Kévin Paradis (drums)

1.  It’s a must-read piece of philosophical literature for any classic philosophy reader. No, I have not read it. ↩︎
2.  Lee and Henthorn go way back, as Lee appears as the sole session musician on Agonanist’s first LP, The Cynicism of Solitude (2024). ↩︎
3. P.1, ch.7 ↩︎