IGORRR

For all its glittering delights, modern metal is still often plagued by the tawdry efforts of the unimaginative. An obvious antidote to all that, IGORRR may have been a bit too deranged and genre-phobic over the years for most mainstream metal fans to cope with, but for anyone who demands that their music is as insane as the times we live in, the French firebrands have become one of the most compelling of modern acts. Whether the songs on "Amen" really qualify as metal in any meaningful way is beside the point. When IGORRR are heavy, they are as sonically destructive as anyone out there. When they are scooting off on any of their esoteric, taboo-threatening tangents, they defy the listener to keep up, torching the rulebook with a flagrant disregard for health, safety or sanity.

As ever, "Amen" is a wild ride through a disorientating world of what-the-fuck. Plug it in, turn it up, and try to dodge the shrapnel. Head honcho Gautier Serre knows nothing of compromise or any notion of narrowing his vision, and just like predecessors "Savage Sinusoid" and "Spirituality and Distortion", IGORRR's third album for Metal Blade Records is so righteously berserk that it defies rational analysis. But let's give it a try anyway.

A swirling shitstorm of digital drums, electro-metal riffs, symphonic bluster, operatic vocals and delicate, faux-acoustic interludes, "Daemoni" provides instant confirmation that Serre is still a restless mind with a whole world of fucked up sound at his fingertips. Vocalist JB Le Bail revels in the kaleidoscopic, robot death metal madness of it all, snarling like a madman with one foot in the real world and another planted deeply in the Matrix. On the classical piano punishment and surreal, choral pugilism of "Headbutt", he leads the charge as if he was in a regular band, but the music that assails his every scabrous belch tells a different story entirely. Blastbeats are invaded by pristine, orchestral stabs, riffs are twisted into glitchy new shapes, and the tangled tropes of cutting-edge electronica are fired out like flaming skulls from a chrome-plated cannon. Nothing is off limits. Everything hurts. "Limbo" is all exotic beauty and ethereal elegance, but underscored by rampaging, machine mania and death metal spite. "Blastbeat Falafel" takes a cue or two from MR. BUNGLE's "California", but forces its essence down an undulating and cheerily malevolent pipeline, replete with barking mad blasting and surf guitar. Meanwhile, "ADHD" lives up to its title, with a joyous dismantling of breakbeat techno that is almost as demented as its supremely disorientating AI video. Elsewhere, "Mustard Mucous" begins like steroidal, digi-hardcore, continues like a stuttering, staccato mess of metal gristle and breakcore bone, and blooms into lurching, pummeling scree, before stopping dead as if that is going to soothe your aching brain. It doesn't, of course, and the transglobal absurdity of "Infestis" only adds to the sense that this is music designed to confuse and confound, even as it digs its spiky heels into riff-driven terra firma. "Ancient Sun" politely fits the bill as the album's sole oasis of psychedelic calm but is rudely interrupted by "Pure Disproportionate Black and White Nihilism", which juggles tar-thick ambience and bursts of horribly distorted, mutant metal. "Étude n°120" is a bewitching, operatic interlude; closer "Silence" promises serenity, with more vocals from the ever-enchanting Marthe Alexandre, but ultimately delivers grimy noise and beats that put your mortal flesh firmly in its degraded place.

One might call it cinematic, if modern movies were in any way capable of being this weird or counterintuitive. IGORRR may be making music for normal people, but nobody will come away from "Amen" with their usual frames of reference intact. Just stick your head in the washing machine, set to spin, and report back if you have any fucking clue what's going on.