It is probably not interesting to you to know that each time I thought about starting this review, I wanted to start with the line “music is music” but my brain kept immediately jumping to humming Depeche Mode’s “People Are People.” But when I start wanting to tell you about exactly how excellent this new album from Abhorrent Expanse is, the defensive impulse is already there, because this Chicago collective exists in the liminal improvised space between free jazz and avant-garde metal. (Hence… ♬ why should it be / jazz and metal should get along so awfully? ♬)
If we absolutely must tip this to one side of the fence or the other, I would tell you that Enter the Misanthropocene is a free jazz album made with avant-garde death metal tools, rather than an avant-garde death metal album decorated with trappings of free jazz, but these distinctions are academic and should hopefully remain subordinate to the live-wire thrill of listening to this far-reaching set of improvisations. The album came about mostly like an old-school jazz session, with all of the eleven pieces recorded in one day back in April 2022. The recording notes on Bandcamp will give you the score on who mostly played what in this four-piece ensemble – Brian Courage mostly on basses, Erik Fratzke mostly on guitars, Tim Glenn mostly on drums/percussion, and Luke Polipnick mostly on vocals/guitars – but each player is credited with such a diverse range of instrumentation that it kinda feels like they mostly picked up whatever tool felt right in each individual moment.
Abhorrent Expanse’s music, then, will certainly evoke comparisons of similar artists and ensembles who have tread those same boards where metal and jazz stumble into a Sharks vs. Jets-style rumble – John Zorn’s Naked City and Painkiller groups, Australia’s Kurushimi, Ehnahre, Neptunian Maximalism, Chaos Echoes, and so on – but the most important thing is the mongrel movement of it all: Enter the Misanthropocene grumbles and groans, it oozes and clatters and slithers and jumps from the shadows. The midsection of the opening title track, for example, with its pillowy, cymbal-free buffeting of toms, feels like Aluk Todolo interpreting Einsturzende Neubauten’s Silence is Sexy, but then the closing minute or so rockets off into free-form guitar squall and hammering drums while the upright bass tries to walk itself right out of frame.
If you’re a jazz-phobic sort looking for a foothold here, “Assail the Density Matrix” might be your easiest way in, with Tim Glenn’s flailing drums constantly speeding up and slowing down beneath waves of noise-flecked guitar and electric bass, all of it amplified by the escalating intensity of upright chimes being absolutely, well, hammered. Also grist for the frothing metalhead mill is “Dissonant Aggressors,” a two-minute sprint of frantic drums, split-channel jazz guitar splicing, and vocal tics from Polipnick that sound like Bobby McFerrin by way of Mike Patton having a seizure. But coming into this album thinking that you need to figure out how and where it is closest to “regular” metal is probably not the most productive approach, because like with so much great improvised music, the payoff here comes from watching these precarious structures form in real time, walls and support beams gliding into place at unexpected angles only to retreat back into formlessness.
With Tim Glenn ‘playing’ a squeaky door hinge on “Waves of Graves,” you might think you’ve walked onto the “Thriller” video set, but it’s woolier and wilder than that, with lightly ominous synth, high string arco bass, and Luke Polipnick’s arsenal of wordless mouth noises, from throat-singing to squeaks, pops, and phlegmy snarling. “Praise for Chaos” is a lurching drone with a whiplash death-noise coda, while “Crystal Proliferation” features clean, contemporary jazz guitar noodling that sits alongside an uneasy undercurrent of dampened, tumbling drums. The whispers, subterranean bass clanking, and rickety electric piano on “Drenched Onyx” turn the piece into a sparse and unnerving noir mood that would make an excellent score for Fritz Lang’s M. The following song, “Nephilim Disinterred,” is an even more ghostly evaporation of sound, with a tense, fluttering overlay of drones created by dragging a bow across various metals. Its six-plus minutes hang mutely in the middle distance like a sickly alien light, but they are punctuated with startling outbursts of cymbal crash and drum clatter.
The album closes with the hulking, ten-minute “Prostrate Before Chthonic Devourment.” It’s a free-form sprawl of teeth-grinding drone, sculpted feedback, slow-motion guitar and bass leads, and an unpredictable pitter-pattering of drums like a pack of small animals scurrying away through a dense forest underbrush. It’s one of the pieces that feels most reminiscent of early Boris albums like Absolutego or Feedbacker. The jazz pianist Craig Taborn guests on synth and glass harmonica, the latter of which cocoons the band’s languid waves of noise in a set of otherworldly overtones, like the time-traveling lament of our future ghosts.
So yes, this entire album is an experimental collision of free jazz and avant-garde metal, but Abhorrent Expanse never feel like they want to teach you a bunch of weird chords or impress you with an audio bibliography of punishing, deep-cut citations. The vignettes they build themselves into across this wonderful album are eerie, disquieting, noisy, unpredictable, ghostly, thunderous, and honestly really just a lot of fun. Dave King’s incredible cover artwork for Enter the Misanthropocene is actually a perfect microcosm of the music: It depicts a musical score displayed sideways, with thick, aggressive streaks of oil pastels, fingerprints smudged and smeared as if exorcising some irrepressible compulsion. Whether those painterly interventions are making the music beautiful or making the music illegible is in the eye of the beholder. Music is music, right? And if you’ve ever counted yourself a fan of weird heavy metal or weird jazz, getting hit with the ol’ “Do you find this music beautiful? Can you even understand it?” is more than a rite of passage; it’s a comforting reminder that you’ve tapped into a righteous, glittering vein of productive volatility. It’s a sign that says, “Keep going.”
