Abhorrent Expanse : " Gateways To Resplendence"

This avant garde metal band is going to have the few hipsters who are still pretending to be into metal, licking their porn staches. The first track is not even a song but feedback and noise. If it had not been for them blasting into business by the second song, then I would have questioned why I had wasted my time with this and to be honest, with the kind of grind core chaos that goes down on the second song I am still not sure this was a good decision on my part until it was to find a album worse than the new Ghost. This is for a different reason. You see Ghost cares too much about their songs so they are slick enough for the balls to fall off of them and become pop. These guys are just fucking around not even getting to songs, there are a few grooves that click together on the second song, but by and large I am not sure anyone knows what the other is doing.  You might want to compare it to jazz, and perhaps some of the free  form elements are there but none of the melody. They lock in at times and that is almost enjoyable if there was a plot coursed. Some of these sound like an ironic parody of metal more than heart felt aggression.

"Frost Suffocation" is a freak out but with none of Zappa's savvy.  I am fine with merging jazz with metal, but I still need you to write songs.   It is more often than not dissonance for the sake of. Mr. Bungle can tackle everything this band touches and work it into a song worth listening to. There is a great deal of noodling that sounds like me just picking up a guitar to try and get inspired to write something on it. I do not feel the need to record those moments until the notes connect to create something memorable. Even in the most fucked up drug state I have ever been in this would not appeal to me so now I am hunting for an audience. I would call this jam band metal, but jam bands lock into a groove that is so good at least to them they can not let go of it. They do not achieve even that much here. They would have been better served as a grind core band ,as there is under a minute of each song that might have been worth recording.  Some of these things are just noise with nothing to redeem them. 

They might have stepped on the distortion pedal by a mistake. It is hard to tell as the entire thing is a mistake. There might be a riff emerging on "Against the Churning Void".  Spoiler alert it does not happen , I made it almost made through the 14 minute closing track it was better in it pursuit of jazz flavored chaos. I decided wasted enough time with this, so I will give this album a 2.5, so it is worse than the Ghost album, perhaps this will take the number one spot in the worst album of 2022 list, I am not sure I can take an album that is more grating.