“Behold a time in which the hand of Karma guides the wheel.”
Few bands are as dedicated to their unique vision as Igorrr. Their latest album, Amen, has brought them into venues far larger than I believed a band this weird could ever reach. This October brought them to their largest UK headline show yet, playing to a beyond-sold-out Shepherd’s Bush Empire in west London, supported by synth metal icons Master Boot Record and experimental death metal trio Imperial Triumphant. What followed was threes hours of chaos and spiritualism – a tasting palette of the strangest corners of the modern metal landscape.
Words by Kiera Falke. Photography by Kieran White. Please contact before any use.
Imperial Triumphant
The lights dim, and all eyes are drawn to stage. A fictional 1930s advertisement for Goldstar cigarettes plays as three gold-clad spectres take to the stage. Imperial Triumphant begin their sermon, the sinister decadence of their stage gear matching the regal evil that permeates every deluge of sound and dissonant interlude. Lyrics that compare industrialisation and capitalism to death cults are growled to a mostly bewildered crowd, stunlocked by the sheer dread of the whole affair. Between songs, vocalist Zachary Ezrin speaks to the audience as if giving a holy speech, voice separated from the masses by thick vocoder layers. Songs that feel like isolation in a cold, dark world envelop an ever-filling venue. With every minute more onlookers are sucked into a death metal set that aims to instill wonder, rather than the urge to try to kill the person standing next to you. Imperial Triumphant are a stage presence larger than their elaborate costumes, and far larger than the size of their fanbase would suggest. It’s impossible to walk away from their set without feeling that the new face of experimental extreme metal is a sinister gold mask.
MASTER BOOT RECORD
Barely recovered from the opulent onslaught of the opening band, we’re thrown into another peculiar corner of the metal landscape. Master Boot Record are icons in the synthetic metal niche, hitting the stage to an enormously warm reception. Frontman and principal songwriter Victor Love proclaims ‘this is computer metal!’ as the band launches into their unique blend of thrash and synthwave. Ancient desktop computers are strewn across the stage, each covered in unknowable runes and debris. The screen behind the band shows a magician, building a computer with magic. This reverence for technology, treating it as tantamount to magic, is present everywhere throughout the set. A wide pool of synth sounds mirror absurdly shreddy guitar solos as 90s BIOS menus are run through on the screen behind the band. Halfway through the set, Victor announces that the next song is Tenebre Rosso Sangue, the soundtrack to the most intense level in Ultrakill, one of the most beloved indie video games of all time. As if they’ve been hit with a command to get violent, the crowd part instantly, rising to the occasion with the first and most violent moshpit of the night. This chaotic momentum continues until the end of Master Boot Record’s 45-minute synthwave rager, the occasion being topped off by the band throwing floppy disks of retro PC games into the crowd.
Igorrr
Surrounded by ominous statues and an enormous, luminous ‘I’, Igorrr hit the stage with the confidence of a band that has been playing to crowds of 2000 people for decades. The relatively straightforward ‘Daemoni’ pulses outward, easing the crowd in, building anticipation for the surrealist rollercoaster that everyone is here for. The atmosphere is thick, and absolutely scorching. A heavily oversold Shepherd’s Bush Empire is heaving with the expectation of every palette of sound imaginable. The next hour is absolute mayhem.
Despite the truly bizarre nature of Igorrr’s material, the crowd hangs off of every note. Igorrr has provided a sanctuary for the musically disturbed to let loose – and let loose they do. Fan favourites such as ‘ADHD’, ‘Blastbeat Falafel’, and ‘Spaghetti Forever’ draw an ever-growing intensity from a sea of concert-goers that become more violent with each song. Every member of Igorrr is on Olympic form. Vocalists Marthe Alexandre and JB Le Bail are the standouts, delivering a sadistic yin and yang that contrasts perfect, haunting operatics with disgusting growls that bore a hole through the listener. Their dual-pronged attack envelops the building in the liminal space that makes up Igorrr’s surreal carnival.
After 15 songs of bone-chilling gravitas and laugh-out-loud genre hopping, Igorrr leave the stage, returning to pull one last reserve of energy out of the crowd. ‘Very Noise’, ‘Camel Dancefloor’, and ‘Opus Brain’ bring proceedings to a close in a perfect encore. Harsh vocalist JB Le Bail screams murder atop the crowd, joining a dozen or so other crowd surfers overwhelmed by the insanity of the past hour.
Igorrr have proven themselves as a band that is far more than the sum of their many, many parts. As a live act, they are unflinching and undeniable. The reverence and forethought visible in every second of their performance tonight has won my heart. Igorrr’s future is bright, bold, and very, very strange.