LIVE REVIEW: Igorrr @ O2 Forum Kentish Town, London

It’s an extreme metal extravaganza tonight at the O2 Forum Kentish Town in London. Playing host to a four band bill representing everything from doom to cathartic post-metal to the sheer mind-boggling array of genres that IGORRR are, it’s a true feast for the extreme aficionado.

French doom metallers HANGMAN’S CHAIR open the evening, their emotionally soaked, haunting songs reverberating round the Forum. They draw heavily on last year’s excellent A Loner, in a short but cathartic set that leaves more than a few slack jaws. Opener An Ode to Breakdown might open serenely, but underneath the melody is a channelling of sadness and yearning, while the yearning sorrow of closer Naïve is truly arresting. It’s a shame they’re on just thirty minutes after doors open, but the crowd does swell sizeably during their set as they demonstrate that slow doesn’t have to mean unenergetic, the band constantly in motion and amping up the crowd. Doomy and emotional they may be, but it’s a huge performance that commands the eyes and ears with ease. 

Rating: 9/10

In a stunning change of pace that induces more than a little whiplash, DER WEG EINER FREIHEIT bring their black metal to bear on the gathered denizens next. They’re utterly ferocious, a storm of blastbeats and shrieks amid biting tremolo picked guitars. There’s the occasional respite, such as during opener Morgen but it’s short-lived as the fury returns. They’re not simply black metal though; folding in clean vocals, slower, doomier passages at moments to really bring the hammer down, it heightens the moments the band do switch gear into blastbeats and what could be termed more typical for the genre. The end result is utterly compelling, holding the crowd rapt before them with deafening cheers erupting between songs or before particularly ferocious passages.

Rating: 8/10

AMENRA are the aural equivalent of a debilitating anxiety attack as it floods and leaves your system. The stage is flooded with haze, there’s an ominous drone and abruptly, Razoreater erupts forth and vocalist Colin H van Eeckhout cuts the figure of a man howling as if his very sanity depends on it. It’s easily the most dynamic performance of the night, softer passages contrasting sharply thanks to a mix that separates the two by what feels like miles, with the heaviest moments like the purging De Evenmens sounding cataclysmic. They’re a visual feast too, with the backdrop during De Evenmens showing haunting imagery of ruined, burned forests and buildings. They truly live up to their moniker of “the last music on earth called up from our of the ashes of its ruin”, and it’s difficult to leave their set anything other than intensely moved, if not emotionally and mentally drained. 

Rating: 10/10

Even on such a varied bill, IGORRR are sonic outliers in every sense of the word. The dancefloor-ready breakbeat that opens their set swiftly gets swallowed by blastbeats, chopped up baroque, opera singing and cavernous screams. It’s every bit as confusing and contradictory as it sounds, and then some, but thanks to the singular vision of main composer Gautier Serre, it hangs together with something approaching cohesion. The mix isn’t entirely in their favour with those screams somewhat buried initially and lacking impact but it’s soon rectified so their bewildering arsenal of sounds can be brought more fully to bear.

The crowd, previously politely appreciative (apart from far too much talking during AMENRA‘s quieter moments) instead take the opportunity to throw caution to the wind; shapes are thrown, pits are opened – the two often collide – and people mosh or otherwise contort themselves in the kinds of irregular patterns and ways only IGORRR prompts. It’s an unholy concoction of genres so disparate it should be a mess; instead it sits somewhere between classical recital and a rave replete with a metal band that shouldn’t know where it is, but fits in seamlessly. It is, not to put too fine a point on it, totally ludicrous and utterly brilliant. If there was a party at the end of the world, IGORRR is the soundtrack to it. 

Rating: 9/10

Check out our photo gallery of the night’s action in London from Sarah Tsang here: 

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