Press play on Agarwaen and the comparisons line up fast: Slipknot in the masks, Stephen King in the long-form appetite for horror, King Diamond in the concept-album discipline, Rob Zombie in the carnival aesthetic. Fair enough. What’s harder to see at a glance is how much actual theater school sits underneath the costume.
The Finnish band’s new album “The Murder Trend” lands July 3rd via Over The Border Records, at the end of a stretch that has gradually rebuilt them into something closer to a touring stage production than a metal band that happens to wear masks. The band’s former drummer Tomas Kasprzyk holds a master’s degree in non-verbal theater. Guitarist Crazy Gustav has ten years of musicals behind him. Their newest permanent member, the actor Vermin, just finished theater school. Frontman Anthony Hodju directs the show himself.
“The idea of having some sort of theatrical show has been there since day one,” Hodju says. “I’m a huge fan of bands with massive visuals, like King Diamond, Rammstein, Rob Zombie, Iron Maiden, Slipknot, and Marilyn Manson.”
Agarwaen call what they do Asylum Metal.
The label is theirs, coined to capture a sound that pulls from black metal, progressive structures, symphonic stretches, and spoken vocal passages, and a live presentation built to read as a scene from a mental asylum horror film. “The Murder Trend,” produced by Emma Award winner Teemu Aalto (Insomnium, Omnium Gatherum) and mastered by multi-Grammy winner Svante Forsbรคck (Rammstein, Nightwish), is the album where all of that gets stitched together into a single chronological story.
That story belongs to Anton. He’s a boy broken by systemic cruelty, and the album follows him as his life spirals from neglect and violence into ritualized murder staged in a circus set and into cult indoctrination. The label’s own summary puts it bluntly: a social tragedy that evolves into a grotesque generational curse, embodied through masks and a carnival of death. The lyrics, all written by Hodju, deal with abuse, trauma, revenge, and inherited madness, and treat violence in the modern world as something contagious once it has a symbol to wear.
Musically the album moves between cinematic instrumental passages, extreme metal, theatrical interludes, and abrupt style switches. Over The Border Records describes it as groovy, progressive, violent as hell, and somehow still capable of putting a twisted smile on the listener’s face. That covers it well enough for music built on theater school discipline that still finds room for a band to film one of its members faking a seizure on a live feed.
That last detail is real, and it started as a one-off bit. “During the solo in ‘Channel of Lunacy,’ I suddenly started acting like someone having a seizure,” Hodju explains. “Vermin got the idea to film me like an influencer on a live feed, and then he started filming and interacting with the audience, too. The crowd loved it, and it’s become an amazing, unique way to connect with them, something we now do at every gig.”
Wyลwietl ten post na Instagramie
The theatrical side of Agarwaen graduated from outfit changes between songs into something more involved at Tapper in Tallinn in 2024. The band brought in a temporary drummer for the gig so Tomas Kasprzyk could come out from behind the kit and perform as an actor.
“This was more or less a test run to see if it would work before our ‘tour-closing gig,’ where we planned to put on a ‘Full Show’ with two actors and all the props,” Hodju says. “It worked great, and at that exact moment, we all knew we HAD TO get a permanent actor for the band.”
For the first year of that experiment they ran on rotating actors. The drummer’s wife Eliska Kasprzyk filled in. So did former Agarwaen guitarist Juuso Tolonen, now in EGRES and Status Abnormis. Other auditions either fell through or didn’t fit.
Then Vermin, fresh out of theater school, walked into the project. “He’s the perfect addition to our ranks and is 100% committed to the cause,” Hodju says. Lighting is handled by Deaf Bob. Sasa Pul has also rotated through the cast.
Early on, most of the theatrical content was improvised live because the stage dimensions changed at every venue. The band has since shifted to rehearsing the show properly so each stop gets the same level of execution. Each member runs their own stage persona. Hodju cycles through several, swapping masks and outfits depending on the song. Building those personas, he says, isn’t a costume exercise.
“We all have our own stage personas, but none of them were ‘purely invented from scratch.’ Each of us brings something real and personal to our character to make it more authentic.” The advice he gives new members is short: “Find the mask that feels right for you, go on stage, and just find yourself. Don’t force it, just have fun and go crazy.”
The barrier between the band and the audience is something Agarwaen actively try to demolish. At a January gig the band sent fifteen clowns storming into the crowd from the stage, “creating absolute mayhem for the entire show,” Hodju says. Not every experiment has gone clean. The band used to load real juice into the blood bags Hodju drank from on stage until they forgot a batch in the bags and it ruined his stomach. They dropped the practice anyway because cleaning up afterwards was unmanageable.
The “Orphan Son” video, one of three already out from the album, came together in a sequence of compounding disasters. The band filmed their January gig in Espoo and brought in an editor for the live footage. The first edit was unusable, the editor wouldn’t accept feedback, and walked. Kasprzyk volunteered to edit “Orphan Son” itself.
Hodju took over the live footage and started cutting it on his return from a holiday in China. “I spent 50 hours after returning from my holiday in China finishing my edit, only to find out our drummer hadn’t even started on ‘Orphan Son,’ which was supposed to be ready two weeks prior, and our release date was in three days.” Hodju had never cut live footage or a music video before. “I took over, and 30 hours later, I somehow managed to finish the edit and upload it to YouTube just five minutes before the release.”
The relationship between the live show and the record runs both directions. “The Murder Trend album and our live show feed into each other, constantly exchanging ideas,” Hodju says.
“Everything on that album started with the song ‘Circo de la Muerte,’ which set the direction for the album concept, the live show, and the overall aesthetic for the entire ‘The Murder Trend’ era.” He notes that the new record also contains several references back to 2023’s “Channel: Lunacy.” The two albums are meant to be read as linked.
Agarwaen’s history runs longer than the current lineup suggests. The band started in 2006 as Shathanas, founded by Hodju while he was still its guitarist, and released the EP “The End of the Santa” the same year.
The name changed to Agarwaen later in 2006, and the EP “Vrykolakas” came out in 2010 just before the project disbanded. Nine years later Hodju revived it for the debut full-length “Dottore I” (2019), recorded with session players Mika Lumijรคrvi (Voidfallen, drums and synths) and Edward Torchia (Torchia, vocals). American metal station Metal Nation named it Album of the Year.
The follow-up “Channel: Lunacy” arrived in 2023, with Hodju switching from guitar to vocals two days before tracking the album’s vocals because the session vocalist couldn’t be relied on.
The same 2025 studio run also produced an EP, “Arena of Retribution,” set to follow the album. Two further full-lengths are already in composition under the working titles “Cocaine Cock” and “Gypsy Wagon.” One is being built as a fusion of Gypsy Jazz and Asylum Metal. The other pulls from ’90s industrial metal in the lineage of Rammstein and The Prodigy, ’80s horror synthwave, and modern metal.
Outside the band, Hodju also runs Bloodstained Metal, an association set up to give underground Finnish bands a route to live experience and to make gig-sharing between them easier.
“The Murder Trend” is out July 3rd via Over The Border Records. The current lineup is Hodju on vocals and synth, Pete Bay on lead guitars, Dr. Wolfram on bass, Crazy Gustav on guitars and backing vocals, and Vermin as actor and percussion.
๐ IDIOTEQ is ad-free, independent, and runs on one person’s time. If you want it to stay that way: DONATE via PayPal ๐๐ SUPPORT via Patreon.
Stay connected via Newsletter ยท Instagram ยท Facebook ยท X (Twitter) ยท Threads ยท Bluesky ยท Messenger ยท WhatsApp.
