(Andy Synn is here to encourage you to lose yourselves in the new album from French Post-Metal collective Ingrina)
Here’s a funny story for you.
Recently, quite out of the blue, we received an email asking us – and I swear I’m not making this up – to stop using so many words in our reviews and to just boil things down to a score out of 10 at the end of each article so that they were more “useful”.
And while you almost have to admire the sheer gall it takes to contact us directly and ask us to change who we are and what we do purely for someone else’s convenience – as if that was ever going to elicit a positive response – it got me thinking about the power of expectations (particularly the wrong expectations) and how important it is to approach things on their own terms.
Which brings us, nice and neatly, to the new album from Ingrina.
What you need to know about Nåværende Lys is that it’s an album that demands, and rewards, your complete immersion… so don’t go in expecting instant gratification.
Rather, with three guitars (four, if you count the bass) creating a richly textured tapestry of sonic tones, these songs weave themselves into your cerebellum via a series of synaesthetic (some might even say “cinematic”, if it weren’t such a cliché) sensory experiences – the heaving opening guitars of “Time”, for example, wash over you in waves of palpable, almost physical distortion, while the keening melodies and soothing atmospherics whisper across your skin like half-heard entreaties from some distant place and time – that trick your brain with an array of phantom sensations and ghost-like phenomena which, nevertheless, leave a lasting impression.
And while Ingrina are not, strictly speaking, an instrumental band, the vocals (minimalist and restrained even at their most cathartic) are treated more like just another instrument, no more – but also, importantly, no less – important than any other, woven deeply into the warp and weft of songs like early Post-Metal powerhouse “Out” and the ebbing, flowing, fluid-motion of “Loosen” such that their impact is enhanced by both their presence (which, at times, makes itself known in rivetingly raw and emotional fashion) and by their absence.
Yet for all that the band’s third album only truly thrives when the listener dedicates their full attention to it, that doesn’t mean that it’s in any way lacking in weight or impact… far from it, in fact, as moments like the surging blasbeats which propel the stunning second-half of the aforementioned “Time”, or the densely-layered, hypnotically-heavy slow-burn of closer “And All The Deadly Frontiers”, should make clear to even the most casual listener.
Make no mistake about it, however, Nåværende Lys isn’t an album made for casual, half-interested listening sessions… it’s an album that only gets better and better the deeper you dive into it, and thus requires a little more time and dedication than your average record if you want to fully appreciate everything it has to offer.
Fans of bands like Year of No Light, Pelican, and Russian Circles, however, will be more than familiar with the sort of commitment this album demands from its audience – as will anyone who appreciates the introspective intensity of A Swarm of the Sun or even early-00s era Ulver (whose influence can most clearly be felt in the shimmering electro-pulse of “Laws”) – and, as a result, may well find themselves putting this album firmly in their Top Ten come the end of the year… an accolade which each and every listen only further convinces me that it thoroughly deserves.