Its been a wild discovery that has teetered on the border of novelty at times. The cluster bomb of cultural, historic and extreme genres colliding in the melting pot that is IGORRR has put French musician Gautier Serre on the ones to watch list. A few years back I caught a live show on the Savage Sinusoid tour and their expansion into a live band showed a promise I believe has carried over onto this newest record.
Beautifully crisp and blisteringly punchy, the percussion holds like a precision drill pounding away with menace as rapid bursts of drums hold everything locked in place with a dynamic magnetism. Inching further away from the break beats and sampling of past, the tone and compositions have a far stronger framework for all the wacky, Baroque and Black Metal inspired musical madness that takes places within these choppy, dizzying assaults of rhythmic battering. Its not a constant haze however, the temperaments change and flow with the music with great understanding.
As a whole Spirituality And Distortion tones down the manic in favor of good song writing. Many of the structures and paths it wanders feel meaningful and satisfying. The balance of polar extremes have cohesion. With more purpose in mind, they work together to flow with the drastic shifts, from calm and serine to slabs of meaty crushing guitar and brutal break beats. It all has direction forging far more gratifying music.
In brief moments where its extremes are not obvious, one might mistake this for a more conventional Metal band. Its a good thing, this eclectic identity has found balance that prevails with authority. The recurring voices of Laurent and Laure let the screams and cultural singing take on an identity where once random sampling showed its stitched nature. Now things are far more inspired. Corpsegrinder of Cannibal Corpse also lends his thunderous death growls on Parpaing for a pleasant tale of rot an ruin in the house of corpses. Its not a bad song but probably my least favorite as they try to hash together conventional Death Metal with this far more flavorful sound.
Favorite Tracks: Downgrade Desert, Very Noise, Hollow Tree, Lost In Introspection, Overweight Posey, Polyphonic Rust
Rating: 8/10