***Somnolent rises from the abyss with its new album The Infernal Expanse, an immense aural beast of infernal and diabolical black/death industrial dark ambient chaos fuming from the monstrous jaws of total hell and oblivion. The band comprises of founding solo multi-instrumentalist Jessi Nihl (Noctis, ex-Lycus, ex-Necrite, among others) on guitars, synths and electronics, joined on this release by vocalist MA (Abstracter, Atrament, Ash Prison), and the work sees the duo revel into unseen deconstructions of reality, fusing dark ambient, ritual industrial, noise and cancerous black/death metal debris to unearth the quintessence of infernal sonic abandon. The Infernal Expanse both complements and diverges from Somnolent's lengthy mostly digital-only and purely electronic dark ambient and harsh noise discography, and sees the project expand its instrumental arsenal and apocalyptic yield to catastrophic effects. Adding percussions, strings, violins, and a churning cauldron of crushing metal guitar abstractions to the preexisting electronic dark ambient substrate, with The Infernal Expanse Somnolent deliberately embrace certain malevolent and diseased strains of extreme metal, morphing into an otherworldly sonic cataclysm of hellish atmospherics, suffocating hallucinatory soundscaping, and flesh-scaring ritual black industrial madness.
LP $21.25
12/10/2021