Today, AGONANIST, the experimental black metal project spearheaded by Tyler Henthorn, proudly releases it’s sophomore album, ‘The Spirit of Gravity,’ out now via Transylvanian Recordings. Marking the album’s release, the project also shares the new single “Cry of Cages,” alongside a video, available below.
On the meaning behind “Cry of Cages,” Henthorn explains, “humanity is trapped by its obsession with assigning meaning to a random, indifferent mess.”
AGONANIST is the experimental music project of multidisciplinary artist Tyler Henthorn, based in San Francisco.
The debut album, ‘The Cynicism of Solitude,’ was released by Transylvanian Recordings in 2020. It was written and recorded while Henthorn was living nomadically between London and Ho Chi Minh City, and features microtonal guitars that were hand-fretted by Henthorn using a jeweler’s saw. He also built an improvised zither using fencing wire and piano tuning pegs, played with a bow. Field recordings captured in Vietnam are present on the album.
The project’s second album, ‘The Spirit of Gravity,’ is out now on Transylvanian Recordings. It was produced in Ho Chi Minh City and the entire album features guest work by Andrew Lee (Ripped to Shreds), Colin Marston (Krallice, Gorguts, Behold the Arctopus), and Kevin Paradis (Benighted, Svart Crown). Microtonal guitars, bass, and keys are used throughout the album, with side A being a mix of 17ET and 12ET, and side B of 22ET.
Henthorn comments about the album:
“‘The Spirit of Gravity’ represents inevitability, our experience of time being an illusion, causality being a continuous web that spans the entire universe where everything exists at once in a splatter of liquid.”
The name AGONANIST is taken from an English translation of a short story by the Polish science-fiction writer Stanis?aw Lem, wherein a civilization has engineered itself beyond recognition and robots have created a monastic religion which promises nothing.
Lyrically, AGONANIST explores existential themes, drawing on ideas from literature such as the writing of Nietzsche, Pessoa, Cioran, and Camus. Sonically, the project sits adjacent to dissonant black metal in the vein of Deathspell Omega, Blut aus Nord, Xasthur, and Krallice.
Out Now via Transylvanian Recordings
Order HERE