For over a decade, Haggard Cat have been increasingly sharpening their mix of alt-rock and post-hardcore. Earlier this month, the duo, consisting of drummer/backing vocalist Tom Marsh and vocalist/guitarist Matt Reynolds, returned with their third full-length album, ‘The Pain That Orbits Life’. While previous material focused heavily on the delivery of adrenaline, this time around their focus is sharper, resulting in an ambitious and deeply personal record.
Working alongside double Grammy award-winning Adrian Bushby, Haggard Cat‘s usual huge choruses are paired with progressive textures, industrial synths, and sprawling arrangements. As Reynolds explains, ‘The Pain That Orbits Life’ is designed to be split into two sides. The first offers immediate highlights such as ‘I Hate It Here,’ and ‘Soar,’ which gallop with intent, demanding to be sung in unison. When they’re not stirring up chaos, they embrace prog territory with ‘Apnoea’ going off on a swirling synth-heavy trip. Turn over to Side B, and you’re launched into ‘Nails’ and its unhinged density. As you make your way towards the album finale, ‘Zion,’ the Nottingham-based pairing takes you on gritty prog-hinting detours (‘Suppressor’) and monumental thrills like ‘Landscapes’. The latter serves as another example of their musical growth. Likewise, the aforementioned ‘Zion’ showcases Reynolds and Marsh’s wide-ranging capabilities throughout its 10-plus-minute runtime. Throwing in sludgy riffs, melodramatic verses, gang vocals, and spacey synths, it’s a sonic whirlwind that maintains its focus.
Having delivered a gripping and eclectic record, there’s more to ‘The Pain That Orbits Life’. Underneath is a personal record that documents a period of growth and change for both Matt and Tom. Beginning in a place of uncertainty, moving through self-examination and shedding the toxic weight, before finding peace. Not the triumphant, fist-in-the-air kind, but the quieter, harder-won variety that only comes from actually doing the work. It’s a journey the duo have structured with real intention, and one that rewards close listening.
Matt Reynolds from Haggard Cat broke down the record in detail, explaining ‘The Pain That Orbits Life’s concept, structural purpose, and what each track is all about.
The Pain That Orbits Life
‘The Pain That Orbits Life’ is centred around a journey of personal growth. It’s about learning to look at the hardships in your path with optimism and to ultimately push past the inner resistance obstructing you from becoming the version of yourself you want to be. We set out to create a record that played like two corresponding sides of a vinyl, even when streamed digitally. Each side individually builds to its own crescendo, before leading you into the next side, repeating over and over to represent our different life cycles and versions of ourselves as we move through life. We intended Side A to feel more insular, looking directly at the troubles surrounding us, whilst Side B is about the catharsis of breaking down those walls and feeling reborn.
I Hate It Here
As the title suggests, ‘I Hate It Here’ is about the admission that you aren’t where you think you should be. It’s about the familiar starting to feel alien and uncomfortable. It serves as a statement of intent for the rest of the album and goes some way to providing a little insight into the journey we’ve been on ourselves for the past five years.
It sets the scene for what’s to come, though, this track is what we’re all about: huge riffs, big hooks and a healthy dose of chaos.
Soar
‘Soar’ is about feeling in complete freefall. It’s about reaching a point where you feel you can’t go on, and considering the most helpless, drastic actions to make the feeling go away. Ultimately, it looks at those externally that perpetuate these feelings of helplessness for their own gain, and warns of the importance of pulling out of this nosedive and rising up and out.
Halcyon
The surface-level positivity of ‘Halcyon’ projects the feeling of better days, juxtaposed with bittersweet lyrics that conjure the unmistakable feeling of regret and anxiety after a big night out.
It’s a song about masking your own feelings and over-compensating by acting like you’re the best you ever have been, and the realisation that the bravado will ultimately fade and you’ll eventually have to confront your demons head-on.
The Afterlove
‘The Afterlove’ is about the moment of stasis and inertia you feel at the end of a major relationship. The feeling of autopilot kicking in and going through the motions zombified, whilst feeling the loss of your usual comforts stripped away. Ironically, you’ve felt all of these feelings before and hazarded keeping things afloat to ultimately avoid them. The song builds to a disorienting climax as everything breaks down around you, out of your control.
Apnoea
‘Apnoea’ is about searching for a father figure and a mentor in your life and coming up short. The lyrics talk about how the stoicism of the generation above us has a profound knock-on effect, which leads to loneliness in adulthood and an inability to communicate through your own issues.
The odd time signature mimics irregular breathing, which gradually builds to the odd timing skip as the song progresses, ultimately leading to a release of tension and a breakthrough moment that carries you through the closing two minutes of the track and to the end of side A.
Nails
‘Nails’ brings you crashing into Side B like a cold splash of water to the face. It’s about staging your own intervention and realising you’re ready to start making changes; you’ve not quite hit rock bottom, but you came close. The scales have been scraped from your eyes, and you’re beginning to process the last few years.
Suppressor
‘Suppressor’ is a cutting off of the shackles that have tethered you up to this point. It’s that final dawning realisation that you’ve been chewed up and spit out by somebody. Whereas they would have kept you restrained and in a period of grief, you are finally wise to their manipulation, and the release moment in this song centres around that exact moment of clarity.
Landscapes
‘Landscapes’ is about the slow collapse of the environment around us; the metaphor is intended to liken our past situation to that baron landscape. It stresses the importance of remembering where you came from and honouring those that supported you through. Even from the most desolate of wastelands, new life can sprout; all that it takes is a little rain.
Warpath
For what is probably one of the more intense points of the album, ‘Warpath’ is about the moment when you feel you’re finally clear of that negative situation in your life, the bad job, the bad relationship, the bad friendship, and all the romanticism around it has faded. One final look backwards to realise things were actually pretty toxic throughout.
Zion
The album’s last stand is our look towards a perceived paradise. The “somewhere better” that we’ve been longing for. It’s not necessarily the final ride off into the sunset that we were expecting, but a momentary peace in admitting to ourselves that we are at least richer for the journey we’ve been on.
‘The Pain That Orbits Life’ by Haggard Cat is available now on Church Road Records (vinyl available here).
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