Igorrr — Spirituality & Distortion — Album Review
Experimental Metal | Electronic | Classical Metal
Listen on Spotify | Listen on Apple Music
There comes a time, every now and again, where an album I look forward to slips completely under the radar, with my finger of blame pointing at Spotify’s flawed notifications system. Igorrr’s sophomore album, Spirituality and Distortion is one of those cases.
However, I’m glad that I managed to discover that this album had been released on the same date as Melt Yourself Down’s, 100% yeas, which just about qualifies it as an eligible April release in my mind, despite my regret that I hadn’t discovered it sooner.
Needless to say, my excitement towards this album was sharpened with the help of the few teaser tracks I listened to, particularly the first teaser, “Very Noise”, which blew my socks off with its hyper-dynamic and extremely unique blend of metal and drum n bass elements. And despite listening to only one other teaser track (that being “Parpaing”), I was still excited to listen to this album in full, and find out just how far they would push their experimentation.
Going back to their 2017 debut Savage Sinusoid for one hot moment, I feel that their use of electronic spicing, along with their fusion of classical and metal were already quite fleshed out. Although, I felt that these elements clashed with each-other a little too much on that debut album, and along with the fact that I was possibly not as musically open-minded back in 2017, this probably led to why I didn’t give that album a fully in-depth listen.
I will get the unfortunate things about this newest album out of the way first; the clashing of elements that I spoke of when addressing Savage Siunsoid, can pretty much be said the same with Spirituality and Distortion. While all of the previous elements I speak of have definitely been refined, it still doesn’t stop each of them from clashing with each other, and this did take me out of the moment in quite a few instances. On top of this, we now also have arabesque instrumentation thrown into the mix as well, with songs like “Downgrade Desert” and “Camel Dancefloor”.
On the plus side, I really enjoyed the majority of the songs that included this arabesque element with them. I was just left wishing that they fully delved head first into making that style a constant theme for the entire project. And while there were a handful of more classical sounding tracks I enjoyed as well, I would deem that their experimentation took a step too far when you have the likes of an 8-bit inspired sound and paired it with the vocals of George Fisher (a.k.a Corpsegrinder) on “Parpaing”. Or another example would be the weird industrial metal and according fusion that is “Musette Maximum”, or perhaps just the entirety of “Kung-Fu Chevre”.
Lastly, there are also a few tracks that actually don’t feel experimental enough, and come across to me as your typical classical metal, that didn’t exactly feel very much like something created by Igorrr, which I think only adds to the inconsistency of this album’s stylistic layout.
As I feared, this is still a very messy album in terms of structure. However, a generous amount of the tracks, when I focus on them individually are masterfully done. I was actually near blown-away by the earliest tracks on the album, and for me I felt that it was at that point where I had the most hope for it. If I was going to pick the most credible style in terms of this albums enjoyment, it would have to be the amazing dynamic rhythm splicing, which seemed to be used to great effect on much of the album.
The handful of tracks that really had my interest the most do the most to carry the weight of the album’s remainder on their shoulders, and for that much at least, I am grateful.
I still believe that Igorrr are yet to fully pin down their signature sound, and I can only hope that they pull this off in their third instalment. Needless to say, however, Spirituality and Distortion still stands as an incredibly fun album to listen to, and definitely one of the more creative albums of 2020.
Favourite Tracks: Very Noise | Camel Dancefloor | Lost in Introspection
Least Favourite Track: Kung-Fu Chevre
Metal Blade Records
