Igorrr - Spirituality and Distortion (2020)

As a very fitting soundtrack to the current global chaos, Gautier Serre’s Igorrr unleashes their most chaotic and yet brilliantly crafted release to date: “Spirituality and Distortion”. Featuring an amalgamation of completely disparate elements like Baroque and Classical Music, Metal and Electronic Music, this release delivers nearly one hour of crazily addictive music. For those that have not been initiated into Igorrr’s madness, this album will definitely blow you away, if you have an open mind.

The album opens on a very mystical note, as it slowly transitions into heavy riffs and the angelic vocals of Laure Le Prunenec. The male vocals are nicely handled by Laurent Lunoir, who turns into a very unique beast-like performer on their live shows, and perfectly adds dynamism to the bands music. Listeners do not have to wait longer to hear Igorrr at its finest with the mesmerizing “Nervous Waltz”, a track that blends lush vocal arrangements, dramatic instrumentation, and electronic madness to perfection.

The band’s unique blend of styles nicely settles in with tracks like the lush “Hollow Tree”, the trippy electronic funky piece “Very Noise” and very playful “Camel Dancefloor”, which is quite sensual and intoxicating. While we are describing the songs in general, there are tons of magical details and intricate levels to each song, we rather provide a general guide and let the listener discover all of them on their own. Corpse Grinder from Cannibal Corpse makes a brilliant guest appearance on the 8-bit era influenced piece “Parpaing”, one of the highlights of the release.

Our favorite track is the very festive and Oktoberfest-like, “Musette Maximum”, with “Himalaya Massive Ritual” coming in at a close second. Just when you think you have the band figured out they unleash the subtle “Overweight Poesy” immediately followed by the insanity of “Paranoid Bulldozer Italiano”, and later they unveil the Meshuggah-esque “Polyphonic Rust”, but with their own twist. We are quite blown away by the quality and variety of ideas explored and crafted into every single one of the 14 songs in this release.

Overall, “Spirituality and Distortion” is a truly unique release with an insane replay value. Igorrr delivers the perfect amalgamation of styles in a very heavy and enjoyable way. If you are always looking for boundary pushing releases, this band and album will not disappoint. We can only hope we get to see this band live in North America at some point.

Label: Metal Blade Records

Release: March 28th, 2020

Genre: Experimental / Avant-garde Metal

Country: France