Album Review: Half Empty Glasshouse – The Exit Is Over There!

Band: Half Empty Glasshouse | Album: The Exit Is Over There! | Genre: Avant-prog | Year: 2024

From: Auckland, New Zealand | Label: Uncharted Sounds

For fans of: black midi, Arcturus, 5uu’s

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I swear I cover more than just avant-prog. Please ignore the fact that this is the fourth consecutive full-length review I’ve posted of an avant-prog act. 2024 is shaping up to be kind of a slow year in most of the other pico-genres I cover, but the crazy stuff is having a decent one. But you know what I don’t cover that often? New Zealanders!

Half Empty Glasshouse is a New Zealandic avant-prog and experimental metal band that takes the classical influences of bands like Eunuchs and integrates it even more. The Exit Is Over There! is their second full-length release, and it’s a concept album about public backlash to experimental music throughout history. The twisted, disgusted and disgusting faces on the album’s cover are a perfect complement to this theme.

The Exit Is Over There! opens with something of a plot summary, as it were. “A Brief History of Disgruntled Concert Attendees”, between uneasy, woozy guitar lines tells the stories of the famously disastrous premiere of Stravinsky’s Rites of Spring in 1913, the 1936 Soviet suppression of Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, and Ornette Coleman’s assault in Baton Rouge in 1949. This band centers the lyrics here, with snarled narration lightly echoing over the clattering, oddball backing. Moving into its second half, the song increased the prominence of piano and violin, and the melodic and harmonic choices are more akin to classical composers than your usual rock song.

“Insolent Mockery of the Divine under Centrist Rule” flows right out of the song which precedes it, and it continues in the same stumbling, vaguely jazzy vein. Dramatic narration sounds oddly distant as piano and Mellotron cultivate a gloomy mood. Heavily phased guitars swoop in as the band sings about the virtues of ugliness in art. HEG does a great job of practicing what they preach; many elements of their music are, on a surface level, ugly and discordant, but there’s a clear artistic intent behind it all. This song does come off a bit long-winded at points, though. Perhaps some of the guitar solo or the pretty piano passage could have been trimmed down to make this a more direct, impactful piece. (Then again, the mere topic of this album does make criticism a bit tricky, as it’s all about defending the upsetting and unconventional in art.)

Brash violins open “Bur, Paris, Burn!” on a dramatic note. Ragged, unconventional guitar lines provide a gritty, grounded backing to trilling violins and swooping Mellotron. As this piece progresses, the string instruments remain prominent, burying most of the rock instrumentation and creating a smothering, overwhelming atmosphere. The use of unclean vocals was also a smart move that adds to the sense of doom and dread.

“A Soviet Artist’s Response to Unjust Criticism” opens with the most exciting, metallic music on the album yet. A jumpy, oddball riff complemented by strings dissolves into a cabaret-flavored piano piece. This passage does grow to be somewhat tedious and repetitious, but the song gains a fresh breath of life when the rhythm section joins in.

Punky, staticky angst fuels the opening moments of “The Shape of Chaos to Come”. The main riff is oddly twangy and somewhat Primus-inspired. Classical elements are relatively diminished here, and that fits with this song telling the story of Ornette Coleman, a jazz musician, whereas everything else up to this point has been about classical composers.

“The Clutching of the Pearls” is the album’s longest song, and it begins as one of the rockier compositions here. The lush opening verse, with its rich textures and strange meter, feels like a bizarro universe version of many classic prog acts. The band continues to weave together twisted, touched-in-the-head riffs that blend rock and classical music in an entertaining way, but the album also begins to feel a hair long at this point. 

The final song on the album is “fff”. Beginning as a slow piano piece, the lyrics draw parallels between the desires to subvert and enforce traditional artistic ideas of beauty. It gradually goes more and more off the rails as the vocalist madly repeats “Beauty has power over us.” Its final three minutes are an intriguing solo piano piece that acts as a fitting cap to this record.

The Exit Is Over There! is a knowingly strange, disorienting record that wields its own weirdness as a cudgel. Things twist and warp in odd, striking ways, and there’s a nice sonic continuity to the whole affair. Certain songs (and the album as a whole) carry on longer than they need to, but for all I know, the band was doing that on purpose to make some sort of statement about conciseness as a traditional element of “beauty.” Mild bloat aside, this is fascinating record that is worth giving a spin.

Score: 80/100