Abhorrent Expanse – Gateways to Resplendence
Release Date: 8th April 2022
Label: Amalgam Music / Lurker Bias
Bandcamp
Genre: Avant-Garde Metal, Improvisational Doom, Black Metal, Stoner Metal.
FFO: Sunn O))), Captain Beefheart, Mayhem, Boris.
Review By: Andy Spoon
This entire album was recorded in one movement on October 8th, 2020. The band touts this album in total as improvised collaboratively in the studio.
The major recording levels are simply not going to be like other albums you might have heard. This is strictly something that this band intends for you to hear this way, in essence, performing each “movement” for themselves at the same time the listener is intended to experience it. It feels almost as if much of the atmosphere and “feeling” of each movement is meant to resemble an expressive repertoire that exists at the very core of extreme metal. That is, to unsettle, to overwhelm, or to overstimulate the listener with mountainous reverb, spurious phrasing between instrumental solos, and even notes largely out of tune or sync with others.
Some consider avant-garde improvised music to be somewhat more “worthy” of in-depth analysis, Captain Beefheart’s Trout Mask Replica (or much of Zappa’s work) being one of the main examples to which listeners refer when citing music with this type of production and performance. As it can only really be performed this way once, the feeling that the listener is taking part is the presentation of the music instead of merely observing from a separate time/space is unique and is worth considering upon a first listen.
Others might disagree, thinking much of the album sounds like what would happen if someone were to put a microphone in every big room at a local Guitar Center. Listening to a few guys “jam” in their basement can be one of the most obnoxious things a person can endure, having taken part, and sat through many, myself. Gateways to Resplendence absolutely has the potential to give the impression that it’s way up its own ass about the “recursive nature of music” or finding some self-righteous way to bring up the Fibonacci sequence, perhaps. However, I think that while dancing over that line like Double Dutch, Abhorrent Expanse might be on the brink of breaching the surface of the next wave of improvisational music, extreme metal.
I find that the atmosphere was harder to follow than I might have liked, making the ability to decipher the overall meaning suffer a failure to launch. I felt more like a spectator than a participant, something that makes a listening experience memorable or unique. The ebbs and flows don’t seem entirely out of sequence. In fact, they are probably the thing that works on the album best, each movement starting and stopping on the same dynamic pieces. However, that continuity is not necessarily enough to engage most listeners, even fans of avant-garde metal. Perhaps this album might have been easier to follow if there were improvised movements between original compositions, giving more effect to the “soul” or identity that Abhorrent Expanse was trying to invoke with Gateways to Resplendence. 
(2 / 5)
