Style: Avant-Garde Metal, Dissonant Death Metal (Harsh vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Deathspell Omega, Wormed, Warforged, demented Jazz Fusion
Country: Germany
Release date: 27 September 2024
Ingurgitating Oblivion is a band with a long, tumultuous history. Throughout the band’s course, they have changed their moniker once, altered their fundamental sound twice, and have gone through so many lineup changes that Florian Engelke is the only remaining original member of the band. It’s taken a long time for them to truly come into their own, with a good number of middling albums in their wake that didn’t quite touch greatness, but this album, with no fewer than six session musicians, can be aptly described as their greatest moment so far with Florian truly coming into his own.
Ontology of Naught presents you with long epics that divide pulverising, demented chaos with moments of dark, twisted serenity. The end product sounds quite a bit like a technical death metal take on Fas – Ite, maledicti, in ignem aeternum by Deathspell Omega, mixed with a bit of I: Voice by Warforged, and a healthy dose of the darker strains of jazz fusion with some occasional classical leanings. Dark Ambient aesthetics are also present, with a bit of spoken word elements sprinkled in. The style of harsh vocals Florian Engelke employs on the album is adjacent to that of Deathspell Omega’s, and it holds a candle up to their work.
Polarization defines Florian’s vision on Ontology of Naught. For instance, the guitar tone is an almost divisive choice; it’s as if the tone chosen was designed to sound as massive, incoherent, and noisy as possible. Ingurgitating Oblivion isn’t really going for a clear, distinct, and precise sound, but more of a jagged, abrasive wall-of-noise that completely overwhelms the listener. Beyond that, everything else feels mixed reasonably well: the drums feel well balanced and they don’t sit too far forward or behind things, and the same can be said for the vocals, which don’t overpower the riffs while still being powerful in their own right.
To make an album grappling with seriously unconventional forms and usages of dissonance, a variety of non-metal influences, and song lengths whose minimum starts at the ten minute mark is a deeply ambitious endeavor. However, what ultimately matters is whether or not what you are trying to do constitutes something that actually works—ambitions as lofty as these often fail at this step. The crux of what Florian is going for here is multifaceted, partly in how the chaos that is built into and granted reprieve from is justified, if the components of the chaos have enough of a diverse vocabulary in their insanity to not become monotonous or indistinct, and if they are balanced with more memorable motifs. Another important aspect is if the softer styles that contrast with the chaos are properly executed in a way that doesn’t feel cheap or amateur, and if the whole epic flows in a way that doesn’t feel completely incoherent or weak.
Florian takes a lot of risks in Ontology of Naught, and some of them do pay off. “Uncreation’s Whirring Loom You Ply With Crippled Fingers” is a great example, starting with an eerie ambience which introduces a simple motif that is expanded upon and returned to in the ensuing chaos. In “To Weave The Tapestry of Nought”, a great example of breakdown and buildup is shown at the midway point: A delirious gloom of vaguely jazzy harmonies swirl around a spoken word passage, which is followed by intricate rhythms below a choral accompaniment with a simple, soaring lead that serves as a bit of a motif. A solo builds before metal cacophony erupts and the solo explodes into almost atonal convulsions, after which the metal becomes much more brutal and rhythmic, like a machine gun being fired at your face.
Ontology of Naught is not without flaws and failed attempts, however. One of my biggest gripes with the album is its usage of spoken word elements, which while not inherently bad, are notoriously difficult to get right. Classic examples would be in death metal à la Carcass, who uses them to paint a gory scene, or Deathspell Omega, who employed them to great effect, staging them as if they were some kind of demonic, biblical sermon. On Ontology of Naught, however, the narration teeters on the precipice of pretension. Florian wants to evoke a sense of radical rebellion in these elements, as if you were listening to the ideologues that served as the vanguard of a revolution, but the effect isn’t quite as profound as he believes it to be.
In addition, there are questionable decisions in terms of flow at times. “The Blossoms of Your Tomorrow Shall Unfold in My Heart” is the biggest offender of this, with the track jumping into chaos that doesn’t really follow any intuitive sense, and then abruptly cuts to Florian’s take on jazz fusion. Following that is more chaos, which isn’t balanced by any motif nor coherently differentiated by other distinctions, as well as an attempt at choral intrigue followed by an ambient outro, none of which really work as a whole song.
Ontology of Naught is ultimately a noteworthy addition to the dissonant death metal genre. Questionable aesthetic and design choices do hold the album back to an extent, with a production job that is divisive, though not objectively bad. However, Florian manages to take on the difficult mantle of making unbridled bedlam into something memorable and distinct, and succeeds to a very commendable degree, with each epic balanced by their own unique aspects in both the extreme and the tranquil.
Recommended tracks: Uncreation’s Whirring Loom You Ply With Crippled Fingers, The Barren Earth Oozes Blood, and Shakes and Moans, to Drink Her Children’s Gore
You may also like: Ceremony of Silence, Mitochondrion, Acausal Intrusion, Defacement
Final verdict: 8/10
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Official Website | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives page
Label: Willowtip – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website
Ingurgitating Oblivion is:
– Florian Engelke (guitars, vocals)
– Norbert Müller (guitars)
– Lille Gruber (session drums)
– Chris Zoukas (session bass)
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