Haggard Cat are a lovely addition to the modern cohort of rock that’s keeping the genre alive, no matter what boomers or whoever say.
Release date: May 8, 2026 | Church Road Records | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | Bandcamp
Haggard Cat are one of those bands you share with anyone ignorant enough to say that rock is dead within earshot of you, along with some of my other faves like Clutch and Sandrider, and other orbiters like the sadly soon-to-be defunct ’68. Like ’68, Haggard Cat are just a duo, two dudes duding it up dudingly to maximum volume with nothing but a mic, drums, guitar, and the drive to play big or die trying.
These riffs and melodies are the kind of shit you wanna see played by someone with big, windmilling arms, slicing the tips of their fingers off with each strum. You need to see the drummer put a stick or two through the goddamn taut snare skin mid-song before pulling another out some magical quiver of sticks behind his back and continue with the rolls and fills. Nothing’s going to blow the stress and malaise off your shoulders like an amp turned to 11 and a band that knows what the hell they’re doing, and THE PAIN THAT ORBITS LIFE is representative of that burning passion that can take you far.
The band have been at it for over a decade now and while this is the first time I’m hearing them, I can still tell. It shows; the amount of effort, iteration, and refinement over time leads to all-timer bands putting out some of their best work, impressing long-time fans and dazzling new ones like me. The lead single “I HATE IT HERE” erupts and undulates between vicious groove and forehead-punching power like someone dove off a live venue stage knuckles first into you and all you could muster was a whimpering ‘thank you, sir, may I have another?’.
But Haggard Cat are here to please. It can’t all be explosive open-hand slappers and they’re interested in keeping things different and special. While THE PAIN THAT ORBITS LIFE‘s comfort zone is the four-minute chest kick of unabated rock wonder, the deep cuts like “APNOEA” and “LANDSCAPES” tease at the edges of it. “APNOEA” is a longer track with more of a Mastodon-like churn and progression do it. The riffs slither around a bit, they’re still massive as are the vocals, but there’s less immediacy overall which is good to have in the middle of your album. “LANDSCAPES” is creepy, melodic in the way a siren’s song might be which is fitting because the song is about our slow collapse with references to environmental death.
“ZION” is the progressive rock apex of THE PAIN THAT ORBITS LIFE, a ten-plus-minute extraordinaire that oozes cinematic flair and takes the time to bring the album full circle as a complete piece, looping back around to the clothesline of a track that is “I HATE IT HERE”. I love how much room the track has to breathe. There’s a tenderness to it as the lyrics and vocals get vulnerable and fervent, longing for a better place, anywhere but here as we careen toward an end. What end? The end, though it doesn’t seem to matter how, there’s several kinds aiming their barrels at our heads. Anyway, love this track, what a finish.
This LP makes rock feel like a transgression just as others have recently – a magnet for noise complaints from playing it too loud, a safety violation during a gig where things got a little too physical, the cause of your speeding down the freeway catching air like those valet joyriders in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. While Haggard Cat don’t really embody the bygone edginess of rock’s history, they do embody the kinetic and unpredictable passion that people insist is extinct. Well, just because our old legends are proving their mortality by passing away more and more (RIP Ozzy), it doesn’t mean there aren’t others around carrying the torch to burn down the next effigy of boring decency. So, no, rock is not dead, motherfucker. It’s got nine lives, and Haggard Cat are spending them wisely.
