Ingurgitating Oblivion “Ontology of Nought”
Germany’s Ingurgitating Oblivion are an unconventional death metal band. Combining the avant-garde with the band’s mix of unique instrumentation, key changes, time signatures and emotional weight to the band’s albums. With a sound that is hard to describe, the band even takes inspirations from everything from thrash metal acts like Sepultura and Possessed to death metal acts like Morbid Angel and Gorguts. But when you listen to their upcoming forth album Ontology of Nought, it is a completely different story. This album is a barrage of everything from the kitchen sink of musical instrumentation, production, arrangement, and overall sonic brutality. Just saying it’s heavy is the tip of the iceberg to the audio depth of this album. Five songs, over an hour runtime and every song over ten minutes. The album is a epic scale voyage into the unknown. An album that pushes what you know about what death metal can sound like, what metal can sound like, maybe even music in general.
Album opener “Uncreation’s Whirring Loom You Ply with Crippled Fingers” opens with ritual, folk-like horns and wails. Creating a horror-movie like level of suspense and the fear of the unknown. The eerie, twinkling noises amidst horns in the background create a haunting, perplexing feeling. Causing unease and anxiety as you are not sure where the song is going or building to. Jagged guitars begin to slowly emerging, and rise from the depths of the track. Ringing through the ether of the song as spoken word dialogue, soaked in delay and hiding in the mix, echo throughout the uneasiness of the song’s motif. Guttural shrieks and manic drum fills come THUNDERING in as the song takes a hybrid of blackened death metal in its guitars and drums. With a sound mimicking acts like Deathspell Omega in it’s occult nature, along with Blood Incantation with it’s synth/ambient effects. But Ingurgitating Oblivion deliver a more macabre , avant-garde in nature. The chugging, chaotic and schizophrenic nature of the instrumentation does really show the unhinged nature of the track. Channeling Abruptum in it’s bipolar nature and weird time signatures, unique sound and overall chaotic delivery. And this is only HALFWAY through the song’s 14-minute plus runtime. Jagged and disjointed, but somehow eerily orchestrated, the song is a jumbled fusion of so many different elements of metal, harsh noise, avant-garde and so much more.
Twinkling, plinking like keys and strings opens the next song ”To Weave The Tapestry of Nought”. The droning, funeral doom like guitars get combined with all-over-the-place guitars and blast beats, as the song already hits a fever pitch. Instrumentally, it’s a case study in unique instrumentation and musical arrangement. With the band almost conducting an orchestra from hell in the structure of the songs. It’s organized chaos in a way. The band toys around with pacing and flow. With some elements of brutal death metal, atmospheric jazz, ambient string sections and even post-metal/shoegaze like movements that the song is a damn mystery as every minute of the song unfolds. Entrancing the listener into a lush soundscape of peace or an unabashed, aggressive dive into an unknowing and unrelenting hell.
“The Blossoms of Your Tomorrow Shall Unfold in My Heart” opens with a rising clean guitar tone and an up-tempo drum beat. Along with little bass leads amongst the jazz-like drumming. Creating a calming, peaceful and relaxing opening section. When vocals officially join the party, the calm turns to distress and confusion as the guitars and vocals begin to mutate to snarling disgust and visceral delivery. Mixes of chugging guitars, tremolo sections and spazztic drumming, continues the almost cinematic take the band is delivering with this record and the emotional confusion and distress it throws at the listener. A constant barrage of the senses from blast beats, aggressive guitar strikes and riffs, combined with the delivery of demon like vocals. But, somehow entrancing as the band draws you in with this sonic onslaught of playing with the song’s flow and teasing the listener of going one way or one genre, before slamming their expectations or predictions into a wall.
“...Lest I Should Perish with Travel, Effete and Weary, as My Knees Refuse To Bear Me Thither” opens with a pipe-organ like piece and choir like vocals. Creating a visual of an occult-like ritual at the darkest of churches. Beautiful harmonies become enhanced with more vocals joining in. With light guitar behind it, it does create an ethereal, heavenly aesthetic in the performance. Jazz drums and reverb heavy clean guitars come in roaring. The choir comes back even louder and amplified. Doom metal-heavy bass comes in to add a thumping gurgle to the choir, as drums start to become more aggressive and have more power with every strike. This, to be honest, might be the most accessible song for someone to check out the album. To see if they want to dive into this album further. The song is still perplexing and intense, but not as schizophrenic in the instrumentation and less aggressive at some points. Almost as if Jarboe or Lingua Ignota sang over a hybrid of funeral doom and technical downtempo death metal.
The album closes with “The Barren Earth Oozes Blood, and Shakes and Moans, To Drink Her Children's Gore”. Returning to the harsh nature of the songs in the early half of the album, the band delivers a punishingly brutal death metal section. With guitars layered upon layered in the mix, soaked in distortion and reverb to fully fill the space of the production. The dive-bomb like guitars, transitioning into pummeling drumming and guitar leads, brings back the chaos for the album’s closing number. Horror elements return, adding more anxiousness and fluctuation to the song’s dark and ominous direction. Demanding, emotionally provoking, uneasy and harrowing, the album’s closes out a beautifully horrific album that truly can be jarring and mentally exhausting as the final note rings out.
This entire album is just a sonic attack on the ears. So many layers of production, instruments and effects, it can be taxing and exhausting after you completed listening to it. Trying to pick up every little nuance or layer with each epically constructed track. It’s unpredictable in nature, unknowing on first listen. This review only could do so much in describing the sonic landscape this album delivers to you. An experience that very few bands can encapsulate and deliver in musical form. Orchestrated beautifully, but harshly. Peaceful, but aggressive. Harmonious and evil all at the same time. An album that needs to be experienced to try to encompass the grandeur and perplexing story that Ingurgitating Oblivion are telling with this album.
SCORE: 5 / 5
You can pick up the album on the band’s Bandcamp page HERE. If you want to stream the album, you can check out the band’s Spotify page HERE.
