Musical insanity comes in many forms. Igorrr are attempting them all at once. Amen is the French experimentalists’ fifth album, and it’s even more unhinged and ingenious than its predecessors.
Creative mastermind Gautier Serre has so many stylistic strings to his bow that fans will be prepared for just about anything, but even by those high standards of esoteric abandon, this is wild stuff. Igorrr are a metal band by default rather than by design.
Gautier’s liberated approach to making heavy music regards everything as grist to his multicoloured mill, and so although Amen has plenty of powerfully metallic moments, it gains just as much evolutionary traction through its numerous leftfield, avant-garde and counter-intuitive elements as it does through giant, scything riffs or glitchy, maximalist blastbeats. As a result, songs such as pummelling opener Daemoni and the opera-sodden breakcore of Headbutt score as highly for their disorientating, genre-phobic freewheeling as they do for their headbanging potential.
As fiendishly clever as he undoubtedly is, Gautier often appears to be exerting control over a sound that has become exhilaratingly out of hand. Limbo begins as a vicious metal and electronics hybrid, but steadily mutates into a giant, symphonic indulgence, with spine-shattering, corrosive bass tones and a mesmerising chorus of cyber-angels conspiring to wrench listeners out of their comfort zone. The delicious-sounding Blastbeat Falafel, featuring Mr. Bungle’s Trey Spruance, twists the avant-rock mischief of that band’s California into grotesque new shapes, weaving multi-tempo madness with furious death metal with complete disregard for the norm.
ADHD is a demented, drum’n’bass nightmare, seemingly designed to provide a soundtrack for skipping your mental health meds, while the coruscating drones, fidgeting percussion and brain-zap riff pile-up of Infestis does not sound like anything else at all. Amen to that, you fucking nutjobs.
Amen is out September 19 via Metal Blade. Igorrr tours the UK from October 21. For the full list of upcoming shows, visit their official website.
