Igorrr – Amen
Igorrr – Amen
Metal Blade Records
Release Date: 19/09/25
Running Time: 50:15
Review by Dark Juan
1,000,000,000/10
Crow Cottage is currently a plague house. I have painted a fucking big red X on the door. Both Mrs Dark Juan and I are laid up alternately sweating and shivering and the Smellhounds are just waiting for us to shuffle off our mortal coil so they can feast upon our inert flesh.
Mrs Dark Juan also bought some Staffordshire pottery dogs which are currently gracing our mantle. She’s wanted some for years. I couldn’t argue considering my current autism-fuelled purchasing of as many model kits I can cram into the spare room. And the current obsession I have developed about buying a bass guitar – my son in law has a double bass and I picked it up to have a bash on it and accidentally figured out the bassline to Type O Negative’s ‘Black No. 1’. This has led me to conclude that I am a bass master. I’m not, I am an utterly execrable musician as proven by the three copies of an EP I sold when I played guitar in Doomcrow, many moons ago.
This is why I prefer nowadays to unleash words on you lot. I’m better at telling you about other bands, who actually have talent and don’t hide stage fright behind masks and incipient alcoholism. Far better for everyone if I don’t abuse instruments and instead abuse the English language. This is the reason for the existence of the Platter of Splatter ™. It has once been called forth from confinement to have an offering placed upon it, and this time it is the latest album by French extremists Igorrr – once this was a solo project of clearly insane main man Gautier Serre, but, over the fullness of time, it has grown into a full band, and the name of the aural insanity I am listening to is called “Amen”.
Once more, I am impressed by and slightly worried about the breadth of French extremity – Fange deal with the most inhuman of Industrial Metal fused with Grind, ten56. have cornered the market in dragging Nu-Metal kicking and screaming into the 21st Century with added Trap and Drill influences and now we have Igorrr. How the fuck am I even to begin describing Igorrr? Let’s just say they have a tune called ‘ADHD’ and it is a pretty good sonic representation of the racing thoughts, lack of impulse control and flitting between subjects that ADHD sufferers report – vacillating between Aphex Twin-like Drum and Bass (it sounds very much like it belongs on AT’s “Come To Daddy” EP), a live choir recorded in a church, pastoral stuff that sounds like a fucking call to battle in a sword and sorcery film, classical singing, melancholy harpsichord and crushing guitars. It’s absolutely fucking demented. This is counterpointed by ‘2020’ which is a sharp, twenty second hammerblow of blastbeats, maniacal babbling and savagery.
‘Blastbeat Falafel’ changes up the sound of the band yet again, with an almost Surf Rock guitar line and sound, and a kind of relaxed vibe, until it isn’t. Whereas ‘Mustard Mucous’ is heavier than the core of the planet but has some mad bastard happily tootling along on a recorder. Which is the first time I have ever discussed the recorder as an instrument in a Heavy Metal review. Although I am sure that a quick blast of ‘Three Blind Mice’ on a recorder has been the solution to many a person’s problems.
Now, Igorrr has always been a project that is more than the sum of its parts. While Metal is the bedrock of the music, the band are not afraid to go to the outer reaches of musical experience. I’d say that Igorrr aren’t above creating a few musical frontiers themselves and ably combine disparate influences and outlandish instrument choices and create a musical world where, although it is rust-stained, grim and concrete grey – there’s light coming through the cracks – flashes of choirs and classical singing breaking through the nightmarish horrors and the absolute carnage around the listener. This musical world is also inhabited by shades and ghouls – relics of times past remain relevant and vibrant in the face of endless warfare and entropic urban decay, moments of clarity shining brightly through grimy, dirt-streaked insanity and an absolute drive for survival above all else. The listener is a person alone among the madness, clinging desperately to both sanity and humanity while laser-guided ordnance rains down from above and shrapnel whines past their muck and tear stained face, yet the armoured and shielded places of worship which remain standing in their blasted city are filled with the sound of the faithful singing praises to the heavens above, loud enough to be heard over the staccato bursts of machine gun fire and the meaty thunks of bullets slamming into unprotected flesh, ever singing to their God to save them from the carnage wrought around them…
“Amen”, then, carries with it a significant sense of menace – not least from vocalists JB and Marthe – JB with his visceral and stentorian roar, all violence tied to desperation, and Marthe with her capacity to veer from heartbreaking beauty to disjointed horror in the blink of an eye. Remi Serafino, on the drums, is frankly fucking jawdropping as he switches from fractured polyrhythms and broken, off kilter tempos to hyperspeed blastbeats. ‘Étude n°120’ offers a moment of rest within the madness, ably showing that Yngwie Malmsteen ripped off classical music quite a lot, as well as evoking the shade of Chopin before leading into a baroque piece called ‘Silence’, all mournful strings, deep emotion and plaintive piano. Until the broken, sparking and twisted electronics come in and take the song into the territory of nightmare. It serves as the closer to the album, and seems fitting as the madness of the music before gives way to the exhausted survivor collapsing in his camp, sleeping, yet still nightmarish with the horrors he has witnessed flitting and flickering behind his eyes as he sleeps, hands grasping compulsively and sweat breaking out on his filthy brow, sleep ebbing and flowing, but no rest being afforded to them.
To attempt to sum up then – Igorrr are a sublimely challenging band to listen to. Their mad melding of Industrial, Drum and Bass, Metal, Classical, religiosity and whatever the fuck else has taken their fancy is right up the street of Dark Juan, who loves it when a band offers him something new. This eclecticism is not surprising when you hear that Serre claims to have synaesthesia and perceives music as colours. One wonders what the music of Igorrr looks like in his mind? Is it a rainbow of singular beauty? A whirligig of coruscating madness? A kaleidoscope of endless forms most beautiful? We will never know. All I know is that Igorrr’s music has done something to my soul and I will never be quite the same again. We will find out if that is for better or worse…
Also, Igorrr is named after Serre’s pet hamster. That’s worth a bonus point right there.
The Patented Dark Juan Blood Splat Rating System (Le système breveté de classification des éclaboussures de sang de Dark Juan est de nouveau à l’honneur chez nos amis francophones. Sérieusement, la France est un pays plutôt conservateur, d’après mon expérience. Qu’a-t-elle bien pu faire pour créer des groupes aussi uniques et brutaux? Je ne suis absolument pas désolé, car elle nous a donné certains des plus grands succès de la musique extrême moderne, mais qu’est-ce que c’est?) awards Igorrr 1,000,000,000/10 for a record that has challenged and charmed Dark Juan yet has left him with dark thoughts and homicidal intent. That may be a mistake…
TRACKLISTING:
01. Daemoni
02. Headbutt
03. Limbo
04. Blastbeat Falafel
05. ADHD
06. 2020
07. Mustard Mucous
08. Infestis
09. Ancient Sun
10. Pure Disproportionate Black and White Nihilism
11. Étude n°120
12. Silence
LINKS:
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