The quirky Frenchman and his band of crazy-talented session players are back with the first new Igorrr album in five years. It’s been a long wait, as I absolutely LOVED that album, as well as seeing him a few years ago at Graspop and loving him there too. There is no one quite like them, and they should be so much bigger than they are already. Having checked out a few of the singles leading up to this, the hype is high, and I’m very excited to hear what the experimental/prog guy comes out with for the rest of the release!
The album opens on a muddy electro beat with ‘Daemoni’. The choir comes in over the top, alongside Gautier’s low vocals with a similar effect on them to the beat, which is really cool! It immediately has a dark, epic feel to it, setting up the rest of the album perfectly. An awesome guitar lick brings in some heavy acoustic drums over the back of the electronic stuff, being an interesting but perfect combination. It’s such a unique sound that really only Igorrr can do. The riffing is awesome, getting me headbanging along before we drop into acoustic work in the middle out of nowhere. It suddenly feels very black metal in the very best way. The hauntingly beautiful operatic female vocals come in over the top of it, a welcome return from his previous work. After teasing a buildup a few times we soon explode back into that massive riff again, this time with some brutal screams over the top. This track is fucking awesome! It’s a perfect taster of exactly the sort of thing the rest of the album will offer, yet is a good song in its own right!
Latest single ‘Headbutt’ is the only one I haven’t yet heard before writing this review. It’s another wild track, this time having some incredible piano work as another focal point. Beautiful, theatre-house piano work with blastbeats over the top wasn’t something I had on any bingo card, but once again Igorrr makes it work so well! It’s again with some more choir vocals, before exploding into pure blackened death metal with the big, distorted guitars and screams. We also get the return of Aphrodite’s INCREDIBLE vocals, again grounding it in a rather operatic, epic sound that more just-so-happens-to-have metal also involved. It’s exactly what I want out of the project, and I’m given it in spades! Not only is Gautier an incredibly talented musician and songwriter, but he surrounds himself with people of a similar calibre, so no wonder this is fantastic!
An epic, operatic start to ‘Limbo’ gives way to another subdued, beautiful-yet-dark acoustic guitar riff. The cymbal work is still pretty great over the top too, and the beautiful siren calls fit perfectly over it all. The black metal elements soon come in over the top, with some awesome guitaring and soon the expected blastbeats. However, it still has a grandiose feel to it throughout, and the dynamics are really great. And damn, that high, distorted note that Aphrodite hits before we head into the djenty riffing is incredible. While it does repeat some elements from the previous couple of songs so far, it’s still a masterclass in technical metal writing and performance, and is an easy big highlight of the album!
Two more singles, ‘Blastbeat Falafel’ and ‘ADHD’, could not be more different if they tried. The former is three plus minutes of absolute insanity in terms of musical talent and arrangement. Meanwhile the latter is a D&B, dubsteppy fever dream, yet somehow that is even made to be a good thing! I’ve checked out both of these tracks before over on our Youtube channel, and love them both in very different ways. ‘Blastbeat’ is the highlight of the album, no question, and is up there with some of the best tracks the artist has ever produced. I only wish I could write or play something as phenomenal. Meanwhile, and I didn’t think I’d actually say this, ‘ADHD’ isn’t quite as good without the nightmare-fuel AI video accompanying it. Still, as someone who grew up in the boom of this sort of thing, it’s damn enjoyable and breaks up the album perfectly!
The 12-second ‘2020’ encapsulates that year perfectly. Enough said. Then the heaviness continues through ‘Mustard Mucous’ and single ‘Infestis’. The former still has some electro/dubstep elements tucked away in the middle at times, while the latter is just a straight up, epic atmospheric black metal track! I remember enjoying ‘Infestis’ when I first checked it out, and it’s still a good song, but does lack the quirkiness of the other songs that I have almost come to expect from the band. ‘Mustard’, however, was chaotic brilliance, and yet another huge album high point!
‘Ancient Sun’ is a slower track, building up rather perfectly through the strings and drums. It’s honestly a great way to break things up, providing a calm, ethereal atmosphere for four minutes after two of the heavier tracks on the album. It’s simple yet still stays consistently interesting through all the different parts of the and instruments used. It’s a real testament once again to the talent of everyone involved in this!
The mouthful of ‘Pure Disproportionate Black and White Nihilism’, alongside sounding like a Cards Against Humanity answer, is a banger of a track! It once again builds perfect before heading into an almost Hu-feeling bit with the low, gravelly vocals. They also build in aggression, turning into a scream and practically a breakdown call-out as it gets heavy again! It’s a pretty standard Igorrr affair at this point, but that doesn’t take away from how great of a track it is!
After a brief, flamenco-style interlude track, the album closer, ‘Silence’, closes things off perfectly. It has a bit of everything, from the quiet guitar and piano and operatic intro to the electronic elements coming in over the top, adding a quirkiness and heaviness to it all. The fact that it has so much dub to it and still has this level of epicness is truly amazing. It is a little shocking it didn’t draw in the metal elements again, being the final hurrah for the album, but is still a fittingly grandiose conclusion to a release such as this! And, it fits the tracks title somehow perfectly!
Overall: Another great release from Gautier and co! It’s packed full of awesome musicianship and compositions, combining metal, electronic and classical elements perfectly throughout. I do have to admit it wasn’t quite as good as Spirituality and Distortion; I think that album had a bit more to offer in terms of scale and jaw-dropping moments. However, that still remains one of my favourite albums of the decade, so comparing the two hardly makes this bad! If you are into stuff on the weird side yet still pretty heavy, I cannot recommend this enough! There are a good few standout tracks that I will be listening to a lot, and the album as a whole is solid and worth at least a listen from front to back. It may grow on me even more with subsequent listens, but for now it’s still a very good release, and one that will surely make it pretty high on our albums of the year list come December!
The Score: 9/10