Great Albums: Igorrr — Spirituality and Distortion
Hey you, do you like Metal music? Yeah? Awesome. Do you like breakbeat techno? Great. How about classical music? Opera? Balkan folk? Okay. How about I play them all at the same time? Sweet. Oh, there’s also some middle eastern flair too.
If you are ever in the mood for a little bit of everything, Frenchman Gautier Serre’s latest bat-shit crazy project under the Igorrr moniker is your best bet.
Just like when 100 gecs’ hyperpop genre-hopping blew minds in 2019, Igorrr did the same in the metal scene with 2017’s Savage Sinusoid. An album that hooks you first by baffling you and then keeps you around just long enough to reel you in with the strong songwriting and creativity on display. And on this follow-up, Spirituality and Distortion stretches it’s long legs to dip it’s toes into even more disparate territory.
On paper there is no way this album should work, or at least no way it could transcend its own gimmicks and not lose novelty. Yet, after having the album in frequent rotation the past half year it somehow manages to make something more than pastiche held by hot glue, elevating itself from “this rips ass” to “this shit rips”.
How?
For starters, the production on this album is across the board (and genres), immaculate. One of the toughest things to get right in metal is the kick drum. It is easy to get too much click and rob the drum of its power; yet, it is just as easy to crank the bass into a murky, headache-inducing mess that overpowers the rest of the instruments. The thumping bass drums have the perfect amount of click in the upper range for definition with just the right amount of low-end to be thunderous without overpowering the mix. Every second of this album allows you to hear each and every layer, rendered in beautiful precise clarity. No small feat for an album with such diverse instrumentation. I doubt many people have production presets for accordion and double-kicks. The bass guitar, another element that is all too often most in the heavily distorted and downtuned, 8 string guitars of modern metal is also pleasantly audible in almost every scenario and is featured prominently across the album with some tasty out of this world slap licks. Further evidence of the craftsmanship featured on this record is the vocals.
The album is anchored by some exceptional vocal performances. Across the album you can hear Laura La Prunenec’s powerful soprano and Laurent Lunoir’s dusty tenor along with guest vocals from the inhuman growl of George “Corpsegrinder” Fisher on the single Parpaing (Who would have known chiptunes could sound so brutal?). The vocals on this album are responsible for some of the highest highs like the baroque-y breakcore on Paranoid Bulldozer Italiano where La Prunenec’s beautiful flying soprano comes down to a vicious snarl before the drums and harpsichord usher in intense violin arpeggios and pummeling blast beats.
Lunoir and La Prunenec’s vocal prowess is on full display in the album closer, and highlight, Kung-Fu Chèvre, a chaotic mishmash of different historical colonizers featuring French accordion, Viking tinged black metal, and Wild West guitar. Oh, and of course, a goat’s bleat. How cheesy.
The album, well aware of its absurdity, has a great sense of humor too. Camel Dancefloor’s fleshy, thigh-slappy hambone line before dropping into gear never fails to make me smile. Serre’s fervent, wordless AAAAAAAHHHHs, humorously discordant bass chords and unexpected sound effects titillate and disorient with such charm that you can’t help but laugh. Fittingly, the lead single, Very Noise, has one of the most bizarre music videos I have had the (mis?)fortune of viewing.
The thing about making so many left turns is there has to be some order and structure or you’ll just make your passengers sick. Thankfully, despite the plethora of ideas contained on this album it still finds time to decompress and use the vast sonic palette to create atmospheric songs like Overweight Poesy and Himalaya Massive Ritual, the latter’s sitar and temple bells allow the song to travel to many places while keeping everything tied together thematically.
One thing that Igorrr understands keenly is the melodrama characteristic of many of the genres he uses. Metal is hyper-emotional, unconcerned with depictions of mundane, everyday emotion.
Metal music doesn’t portray ennui, it portrays angst. It doesn’t depict happiness, it depicts triumph. It isn’t angry, it is enraged. You don’t talk about smoking weed, you make biblical trans-desert pilgrimages for it. Much of what makes metal so powerful to so many people is its ability to explore these feelings. Metal may not be relatable, but we can instead live vicariously through it.
Serre uses this to his advantage by taking operatic, emotional exaggeration and baroque, Balkan and breakcore’s technical complexity to create rich and unexpected textures, it is both musically and emotionally maximalist and it is beautifully tied together through metal music.
If variety is the spice of life then Spirituality and Distortion is the spiciest hot wing you’ve had in a long time.
Originally published at http://sondergardworks.wordpress.com on January 28, 2021.
