Igorrr - Savage Sinusoid


This band/project/act/whatever is probably one of my personal musical discoveries this year that I am most thankful to have found. After just one listen through this thing, I had to get the physical version of this album here. I have to emphasize the personal aspect of my love for this record ahead of my discussion of it because I’m sure many aspects of it that I enjoy are probably turn-offs or negligible to most, although I hope that I’m wrong and this incredible group gets the recognition they deserve
To call this album and its creators part of the avant-garde in metal seems accurate, but also like something the band wouldn’t want attached to their name and preparing ill potential listeners for the level of ridiculousness and kooky humor abound throughout the album. “Viande” starts the album off with a few psychotic a cappella screams bearing intense heat but also carrying unusual, wily inflections indicative of just how wildly uninhibited the rest of the album is about to be. These insane screams return, chopped and screwed into an increasingly chaotic and industrial form of crushing groove metal. Following, “ieuD” brings a passionate, hoarse solo operatic introduction into a restless opus of blast beats, ambient guitars, female opera, electronic beats, and a few subtle, weird samples. The goofy yelling and accordion/blast-beats/sax madness in the subsequent “Houmous” are exemplary of why I love this album; its intense brutality and infectious rhythms, intertwined with comic relief are very much the background noise in my head put to tape in ways better than I could ever dream. Aside from that, the beat is quite groovy as the unusually paired styles find great chemistry; also, there’s a chicken on the track. “Opus Brain” plays around a little more seriously, seemingly, with loud-soft dynamic and a variety of guitar playing styles atop an unsettling opera performance and bleeding screams, and “Probléme D'émotion” finds Igorrr pulling upon the gas pedal to build a vibrato-filled opera performance and slow-battering electronic beat on an uncomfortably serene piano-led interlude. The album’s front side hardly exhausts their novelty either as the second side offers a few more overtly dubstep bits.
“Spaghetti Forever” sandwiches a distorted, electro-heavy, acoustic drum beat, organ, strings, screams, and choir vocals between some classical acoustic guitar plucking, and it’s surprisingly one of the album’s more contagious tunes. The accordion that kicks off “Cheval” into a spastic drum-fill fest accompanied by growls from the talented Travis Ryan, who’s vocal prowess is even more recognizably exhibited on top of the staccato bass lines of “Apopathodiaphulatophobia”. The instrumental interlude “Va Te Foutre” does the opposite of what the first side’s interlude does, instead gratuitously grinding away on repetitive piano motifs and blast beats. Probably one of the already diverse album’s most unique tracks, “Robert”, features a tasteful, headbang-inducing dubstep beat and scratchy distorted guitar with cut-ups of uncomfortable mouth sounds, weird screams, and further contribution from the Cattle Decapitation vocalist. A fitting, and necessarily cool down of a closing track, “Au Revoir” brings together a blend of the baroque piano melodies, epic guitar leads, heartstring-tugging violins, and non-distracting distorted electronic sounds into a finale more grand than such a wacky project would be expected to have.
Everything I just mentioned of the songs on the album is strung together so sporadically but smoothly interconnected at the same time. It’s not just a random jumble of musical alphabet soup either as the songs are clearly composed with a directive in mind and executed masterfully. Clearly not demanding to be taking so seriously, Igorrr have provided one of this year’s funnest and most unique records, and it’s definitely one of my favorites of the year so far.

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