Style: dissonant death metal, technical death metal, progressive death metal, brutal death metal (harsh vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Gorguts, Blood Incantation, Ulcerate, Devourment, Portal, Defeated Sanity
Country: United States-IL
Release date: 25 October 2024
Death metal’s evolution branches into two distinct paths: intelligent complexity or leaden heaviness. The boundaries are pushed from both of these sides. As far as complexity, bands try to one-up who can go fastest (it’s always Archspire) or create the most intricate compositions (Ad Nauseam, for my money), and for heaviness… well, it’s a steamrolling competition, punches thrown as various slams, breakdowns, and the like. Both sides are fun, and they often overlap (see Defeated Sanity, Nile); but that’s usually the tech/br00tal side, not the disso/brutal one. Chicago’s sci-fi death metal aliens Gigan, though, write music that’s firmly between Ulcerate and Devourment, an oppressive, monolithic blend of chaotic and crushing death metal. Is this the ideal blend of smart dissonance and smooth-brained heft?
Like Ulcerate, Gigan are a three piece whose drummer is the hero: Nate Cotton of Gigan is an absolute monstrous presence behind the kit. While the other instrumentalist (guitar, bass, xylophone, theremin, synthesizers) Eric Hersemann makes a whole lot of noise to create a hazy labyrinth, Cotton goes ham atop it with relentless blast beats and often takes up the focus as a soloist of sorts. “Trans-Dimensional Crossing of the Alta-Tenuis” opens up with three minutes of atmospheric death metal guitars and bass while Cotton beats his drums in endlessly varied pitter-patters and explosive flurries of triplets. Other tracks like “The Strange Harvest of the Baganoids” start similarly, and the violent deluge of percussion is the highlight of Anomalous Abstractigate Infinitessimus. In addition to the ridiculously sick drum fills that permeate the album, vocalist Jerry Kavouriaris complements Cotton well with his percussive barks, and the science fiction tales he recites are engaging and fun.
Speaking of the lyrics, they’re often rather prescient and meta; for example, “Square Wave Cognition” opens with the line, “madness, disorientation and confusion / upended cognition.” This album will cause all of these effects on the listener. The album is complex and shifty like Ulcerate, it also is produced like you’re inside of a cement mixer being thrown around in the pitch black with liquid concrete and is suffocatingly heavy like Devourment. Occasionally Gigan become recognizably tech death like in “Square Wave Subversion” and there are prog flourishes like how Afterbirth are prog—the sci-fi metal classics of theremin and vocoder, specifically—but overall it’s murky and enveloping noise. Gigan utilize all sorts of whooshing sounds, background synths, and distorted guitars to fill the space, and it’s a weighty experience that drowns you in sound.
I certainly want my death metal to be overwhelmingly heavy, but overall Anomalous Abstractigate Infinitessimus is a collage of noise from which it’s almost impossible to extract melodies or memorable riffs, even the breakdowns being lost. The worst offender is the ten-minute centerpiece “Emerging Sects of Dagonic Acolytes” which takes a leap beyond the overwhelmingly chaotic death metal straight into several minutes of swirling noise—A LOT of swirling, disorienting, filthy noise. Noise can be good, creating chaos and the dramatic soundscapes this sort of music needs, but when it takes away from the death metal parts, it becomes a problem for me. Thus, while the inclusion of the sound effects and overly layered instruments are acceptable and would be a neat songwriting tactic to close out a track, the extended noise sections kill the album’s flow, making sections of the album drag on far too long (the doomy intro to closer “Ominous Silhouettes Cast Across Gulfs of Time” is another). This is Portal’s approach to extreme metal, especially on their most recent releases, so fans of the Aussies should love this, but I can’t count myself among them. Ironically, despite being so dense I can hardly figure out what’s going on at several points, I think Gigan suffer from repetitious bloat more than anything else.
In theory, Gigan should hit me like two continental plates colliding and make me put on my thinking cap while I beg for more aural punishment, but Anomalous Abstractigate Infinitessimus can’t decide to what degree to be mercurial. I lose the plot in the buzzsaw of the guitars and the elaborate compositions, but I never find myself bewildered and beaten—just mildly bored waiting for the next distinct solo or riff, really anything that rises out of the turbulent murk. This album is certainly an anomaly, but it won’t be my go-to for brutal dissonance.
Recommended tracks: Square Wave Subversion, Katabatic Windswept Landscapes, Erratic Pulsitivity and Horror
You may also like: Artificial Brain, Mithras, Flourishing, Wormed, Diskord, Fractal Generator, Mitochondrion, Ingurgitating Oblivion, Warforged, Anachronism, Infernal Coil, Afterbirth, Wormhole
Final verdict: 6/10
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Metal-Archives page
Label: Willowtip Records – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website
Gigan is:
Eric Hersemann – All electric, acoustic and bass guitars, theremin, otomatone, synths, lyrics, concepts and madness.
Nathan Cotton – Drums, percussion and Sunny weather.
Jerry Kavouriaris – Vocals and violence.
