Agarwaen — The Murder Trend Review

Auditory Hallucinations

The vocal performance stands as the clearest indicator of The Murder Trend‘s mental-hospital aesthetic. It delivers a theatrical yet deeply grounded performance, functioning as a fluid, character-driven hybrid that mirrors Anton’s trauma, rage, and psychological unravelling through constant shifts in tone rather than relying on a single vocal mode.

The vocal performance becomes the primary vessel for Anton’s trauma — a descent that feels terrifyingly real.

• Manifestation I — The Overlapping Voices — the vocals shift seamlessly between cavernous, harsh deep growls and piercing, higher-pitched screams. These two extremes are frequently layered directly over one another, creating a sickening, claustrophobic intensity that highlights his internal chaos.
• Manifestation II — The Quiet Voices — the hymn integrates eerie spoken-word and half-whispered narrative passages. These moments strip away the extreme metal distortion entirely, presenting the raw, grounded voice of Anton’s trauma in its most vulnerable state.
• Manifestation III — The Fractured Voices — when Anton’s psyche completely fractures under social cruelty and neglect, the delivery pivots into nu-metal-adjacent rhythmic phrasing of a mind pushing past the point of no return.
• Manifestation IV — The Forgotted Voices — clean or semi-clean vocal lines are deployed with extreme scarcity. Used sparingly as a deliberate structural tool, these moments provide a fleeting, heartbreaking contrast that highlights the stolen innocence of the boy behind the mask before the primal brutality takes over.

The Anatomy of Decay

The guitar writing mirrors the plot with precision, altering its character to trace Anton’s mental decay:

• Phase I — The Violent Spirals — during Anton’s active descents into slaughter, the guitars lock into tight, percussive, down-tuned rhythm work that maximises the hymn’s claustrophobic weight.
• Phase II — The Traumatic Reflections — in the story’s quietest, most reflective moments, the distortion drops away to reveal cinematic, almost soundtrack-like clean passages — evoking the smoother, haunting intrusion of repressed memories.
• Phase III — The Carnival Horrors — during the surreal circus-themed sections, the fretwork contorts into nu-metal-inflected bends and strange, unpredictable syncopations that turn melodic lines into mocking, avant-garde nightmares.

The Machinery of Madness

Reinforcing the horror-metal and psychological weight of the album is the bass that sits prominently in the mix with a thick, body-forward presence, providing a dense visceral anchor beneath the chaos. The drumming is modern, punchy, and completely narratively reactive, utilising complex rhythmic patterns to actively drive the madness of the hymns forward.

Rather than delivering a static extreme metal blast, the percussion adapts structurally to mirror Anton’s evolving insanity across the record’s narrative chapters:

• Response I — The Early Chapters (Bad Beginning & God Complex) — the drums lock into a heavy, punishing groove-metal stomp, establishing the crushing weight of systemic neglect and social cruelty.
• Response I — The Theatrical Fracture (Clowny Business & Circo de la Muerte) — he percussion mutates into syncopated, circus-like rhythmic motifs, twisting familiar carnivalesque cadences into bizarre, avant-garde weapons of horror.

Layered beneath this sonic violence are low, menacing background textures that sit deep within the mix. Operating like distant institutional machinery, these ominous undercurrents utilise subterranean drones, metallic resonances, and cold atmospheric swells that mimic the fluorescent hum of a psychiatric ward or the static electricity trapped inside Anton’s mind.

Beyond the Cell

Overall, The Murder Trend is a theatrical-horror fruit of art — a definitive monologue of madness and psychopathology that sounds like a tight sonic straitjacket. The record refuses to offer a comfortable escape, trapping the listener inside the gritty psychological realism found in Joker while invoking the relentless dread of John Carpenter‘s Halloween. 

This is far more than mere music; it serves as the rawest, most agonising expression of a character completely spiralling out of control into a suffocating vortex of violence and delusion.

The Final Descent

As the album officially closes with its over thirteen-minute title hymn, The Murder Trend, Anton’s dark interior monologue becomes fully externalised and weaponised. The journey ends in a cold, mechanical void that leaves the listener sitting in the dark, completely frozen by the grim psychopathology of what has just unfolded.