“‘Frost Suffocation’ is a series of sharply contrasting timed duos, a design inspired by John Zorn’s Naked City. It juxtaposes lumbering doom passages with Ornette Coleman’s Harmolodic concepts, furious death metal blasts, haunting ambience, and plaintive string interludes,” says Abhorrent Expanse vocalist and guitarist Luke Polipnick. “It was executed live in the studio in a single, continuous take by the band by assigning each solo or duo subset a time duration and collectively following a stopwatch. All of the actual musical content was fully improvised. No specifics were discussed beyond the pairings of players and the duration of each segment. The video was masterfully assembled, edited, and artfully degraded by Minneapolis guitar icon Jeremy Ylvisaker.”
Abhorrent Expanse’s forthcoming record Gateways To Resplendence articulates the unspeakable dread which dwells in the sepulchral caverns of the mind. A grotesquely improvised manifesto plumbing from the depths of blackened death, funeral doom, noise, and free jazz, it defies the listener to decipher its riddles and confront its paradoxes.
On this record, the band say the connection was immediate. Adam Tucker at Signaturetone Recording used a variety of unorthodox techniques to help the band convey their vision. The resulting album is awash with contradictions, an organic, multifaceted, and deeply challenging listening experience that will push fans of both genres to their limits.
Heavy and unrelenting, moving seamlessly between blasting death metal, doom interludes, and oddly timed music in a genre all its own, “Frost Suffocation” got me stoked for the record drop.
Abhorrent Expanse will release Gateways To Resplendence on CD and digital through Amalgam Music and a limited run of 50 tapes via Lurker Bias on April 8. Find preorders at this location.
Photo by Pemalyn Hessing