Haggard Cat – The Pain That Orbits Life
Release Date: 8th May 2026
Label: Church Road Records
Bandcamp
Genre: Alt Rock, Heavy Rock, Indie, Garage Rock, Grunge, Post-Hardcore.
FFO: Heck, Dead Kennedys, Soft Play, ‘68, Death From Above 1979.
Review By: Paul Franklin
Drummer Tom Marsh and vocalist/guitarist Matt Reynolds are both pillars of the UK rock and metal scene, having initially made names for themselves as members of the cult band Heck.
With their new project Haggard Cat the aim was to maintain the same noisy, lawless rock and roll energy of their previous band, albeit with more of a laser sharp focus on diverse songwriting and infectious hooks, there is no doubt that they are at their best when feel like they might collapse at any moment—when the riffs are just a bit too sharp and the vocals sound like they’re being dragged out of the singer rather than performed.
On new album, The Pain That Orbits Life, that chaos is still there, but it’s been reined in, shaped into something more deliberate…the duo drawing on more progressive influences, featuring sprawling epics and industrial synths along with huge choruses.
I Hate It Here opens with intent, all wiry tension and a chorus that almost soars without fully cutting loose. It’s a statement of purpose, but also a hint at the album’s biggest issue—everything feels just slightly contained. Soar follows and leans harder into melody, with a cleaner, more expansive hook that shows the band stretching out, even if it sacrifices some of that teeth-bared intensity they built their brand on.
Halcyon is where things start to click. There’s a sense of to and fro, of restraint and release, building into something that feels earned rather than forced. It’s one of the tracks that sticks in your head afterwards, rather than just passing through.
Mid-album, Afterlove and Apnoea drift with more introspective textures, but do suffer slightly from the slower pace. You keep waiting for a moment that never quite arrives. It does arrive with Nails which snaps things back into focus with a tighter, more aggressive, if slightly familiar edge.
Suppressor and Landscapes blur together a little, sitting in that awkward middle ground where the band are clearly aiming for something bigger and more atmospheric, but don’t quite commit enough to convince. They are competent, but rarely compelling.
Then there’s Warpath, which injects a bit of venom into proceedings. It’s scrappier, more direct, and refreshingly unpolished, you can feel the band really loosen up here.
Closer Zion tries to tie everything together with a more expansive, almost cinematic feel. It’s ambitious, and you can respect that, but it ends up feeling more like a rehearsal of a grand finale than the real thing.
There’s no denying this is a more considered record—more polished, more expansive, more “complete.” But in smoothing out their edges, have Haggard Cat lost a bit of the volatility that made them so compelling in the first place. There are flashes, the aforementioned Halcyon, Nails and Warpath, where all the targets line up, but then there as just as many occasions where it feels like the band are holding themselves back.
A solid effort, then. There’s growth here, no question, but we might have to wait until the next release to see whether that growth serves the band well going forward.
(3 / 5)
