AGENBITE MISERY Release New Single “Circe” from Forthcoming Album Remorse of Conscience!

New Hampshire experimental extreme-metal trio AGENBITE MISERY have unveiled “Circe,” the latest single from their forthcoming debut album Remorse of Conscience, due out February 6, 2026.

A more direct black metal track filtered through a psychedelic, exploratory lens, “Circe” adapts the fifteenth chapter of James Joyce’s Ulysses, the infamous “Nighttown” episode, into sound. In the novel, Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus drift drunkenly through Dublin’s red-light district as the chapter dissolves into a feverish hallucination filled with nightmares, guilt, satire, and fleeting grace. AGENBITE MISERY translate this dream logic into music built from hypnotic, undulating riffs that blur structure and sensation, leaving the listener suspended in a disorienting haze.

Rhythmically, the song is deliberately unstable, simultaneously implying both 4 and 6 feels as guitar, bass, and drums suggest conflicting patterns. Arpeggiated chords float over exotic drum figures before collapsing into tremolo-picked, unresolved progressions that nod toward acts like Deathspell Omega. The trance fractures at key moments. Ascending organ lines usher in a shout-along, almost hardcore-tinged chorus driven by skank beats and pick scrapes, while two contrasting guitar solos, one sinister and galloping, the other melodic and angular with an Opeth-inspired edge, cut through the fog. The track ultimately returns to its central riff in a subdued, atmospheric form, mirroring the emotional comedown after a long night of intoxication.

Lyrically, “Circe” draws directly from Joyce’s text, favoring vivid imagery and dark humor over linear narrative. Lines evoke Dublin’s nocturnal landscape dissolving into pastoral hallucinations, robed figures speaking in many tongues, Bloom’s self-lacerating fantasies, and Stephen’s haunted psyche. The song closes on one of the novel’s most poignant moments, Bloom’s vision of the ghostly son he never had, a fragile reminder of humanity and perseverance amid the chaos.

Remorse of Conscience adapts Ulysses into eight aggressive, atmospheric compositions that merge blackened sludge, dissonant death metal, post-punk, and ambient drone. Written in 2023 and recorded in 2024, the album was self-produced by the band, mixed by Eric Sauter, and mastered by Brad Boatright. While steeped in dense literary reference, the record ultimately reaches beyond academia toward the raw human experience at its core, confronting the question of whether meaning can still be found amid modern ruin. AGENBITE MISERY’s answer is unambiguous. Yes.