Album Review: Ingurgitating Oblivion – Ontology of Nought
Reviewed by Eric Clifford
Lambent jaw; sickly radiance pulsing through the mire beyond reality itself. Undulating tongues lap trickling Venom which spills through that ragged wound, hissing as the edges bubble and dissolve further. What lurking construct of unknowable aeons aged horror sits famished and poised to break through into the frail world of man? My senses fail to reckon with it; all mutating angles, a live labyrinth of fang and tentacle recombining and writhing in upon itself. A thousand eyes, more/less by the second, screwed fast into slimed surfaces phasing between diaphanous veils at one moment perceptible, at another obscured. Hate, whispered in all languages and none, as I claw at my face screeching, that I may be spared further witness. Looped tendrils of malleable bone, marble pale, flow like pus from gangrenous ulcerations that burst and pour, then zip closed and vanish. Alien laughter borne in air that seems to corrode, carrying the sound aloft unwilling and violated. The gash in reality widens father still; a mile at first, now two, and still no end to the behemoth forcing loathsome protrusions through, yearning, yearning, yearning...to feed. I am lost to myself, rolling rabid and crazed in the mud, crimson rivulets running to mingle with the sludge below as I gouge my own eyes free of my skull. That sardonic cackle mingling with my own frenzied shrieks spat airborne with such force as to carry straps of my throat lining with them, little wet scraps splattering around. A stench dredged from some nadir betwixt sulphur and rotting flesh, acrid and unwholesome blisters my nostrils, filling me with the scent of my own burning meat. How do I perceive it still? Noisome talons touch the earth which recoils, febrile and scorched.
“SPARE ME” I scream, to no answer. I begin shrieking; high, mad laughter as the world burns, the last shreds of my Sanity flying from me to dissolve in the corrupted air.
“Ontology of Nought” is terrifying, both in conception and execution. It’s composition seems to obey a twisted supernatural logic understandable only by itself, some madcap clash of jazz, noise and death metal utterly supreme in terms of technical skill from it’s astonishing drum work (courtesy of Defeated Sanity’s resident kit genius Lille Gruber) to it’s breathtaking guitars. Time signature, key, timbre, it shifts and reinvents ceaselessly, moving from appallingly heavy faster sections to unsettling yet somehow infectious choral or synthesizer sections. Opener “Uncreation’s Whirring Loom You Ply with Crippled Fingers” sets the stage perfectly, creeping into being from some decaying maternity ward in hell with eerie, breathy horns and subtle, deeply unnerving bass. Slow plucking of dissonant arpeggios join in; this is, so far, the sound of walking into a serial killer’s basement. It
collapses in upon you at around the 3.30 point; hellish enunciations, the distortion building and building, Lille’s drumming growing more frantic by the second. The song mutates and grows, an extraterrestrial parasitoid larvae reaching maturity within your flesh. An apocalyptically violent tsunami of blastbeats and distortion transitions inch by loathsome inch into a gorgeous piece of jazz fusion to finish out the song, elevator music for the descent to perdition’s flame.
Second track “To Weave the Tapestry of Nought” is just as palpably sinister; angular dirges of dissonant, disquieting sludge wax and wane alongside sudden spurts of incandescent rage I quiver cowed and feeble before; whence, then, comes this jaunty burst of 70’s proggishness? Echoing and delicate, with a warm bass solo amiably noodling along. It’s such a pleasant respite from the murderous siege the band are elsewhere unleashing and there is genius in it’s construction, the sheer quantity of elements the band marshal to order moment to moment. And these are long songs too – this present one being one of two songs on the album over 18 minutes long – in an album that is itself over 73 minutes long. Ghostly female vocals join the maelstrom, foreboding and stark. Even in the relative calm of these sections there is always this uncomfortable veneer; a sense that lurking behind the superficial beauty waits a bug-eyed psychopath ready to spring. And spring they do. The second half of “To Weave the Tapestry of Nought” is a whirling storm of atonality, akin to being thrown in a washing machine with a bag of knives. Guitar solos are frequent and jaw dropping, further evidence (as though any were needed) that this band wield untold talent. The song fades into the shadows with a final section of nailbiting ambience; wind howling at the edge of an invisible precipice, threatening to cast you howling into the chasm below.
“The Blossoms of Your Tomorrow Shall Unfold in my Heart” switches tack a little, choosing instead to commence with the type of off-kilter lounge music you might find in Belelzebub’s waiting room. It doesn’t last; and we perhaps here see some of Lille’s brutal death influences coming through in the form of some chunky discordant slams. Not quite so suffused with the terror induced by the former two tracks, this one is more content to settle into a sense of lumbering malignity, more akin to the gradual slither of a brood of large carnivorous snails with an unyielding hatred for mankind devouring you from the feet up. Latter sections weave in beautiful, solemn melodies, again courtesy of the aforementioned female vocals, drawing the harrowing proceedings to a serene, if forlorn, close.
Song four, “...Lest I Should Perish with Travel, Effete and Weary, as My Knees Refuse to Bear Me Thither” is the shortest one at a mere 10 minutes. By far the most sedate piece on the album, it’s also the only one in which I’m not convinced that Ingurgitating Oblivion’s ambitions fully pay off. Too much of it plods and meanders, feeling too much like something of an aimless Jam session. The melodious vocals don’t gel altogether well with the groaning chaos below them. The impression I had, for the first time, was that substantial parts of the song were rather unfortunately reminiscent of what might happen if morbid angel turned up to record “God of Emptiness” drunk. Which isn’t to say it’s entirely without merit. There’s a demure bit of sombre jazz in the midsection that I liked, and the earliest portions of the song have a desolate beauty to them, calling to mind some of Lingua Ignota’s quieter if no less grave moments.
Home stretch now. If not light at the end of the tunnel, then at least the peace of the grave. “The Barren Earth Oozes Blood, and Shakes and Moans, to Drink Her Children’s Gore” Ratchets up the tension immediately with a withering initial assault, blast furnace intense. Vocals render a grisly homage to a more demented Atilla from Mayhem, unhinged, phlegm-drenched and altogether gross. Often layered on top of other vocal tracks the effect is like being screamed at by a horde of Uruk-Hai. We slip – beaten into place really – into spacey psychedelia, cartwheeling insensate through a kaleidoscope of undreamed-of colours and patterns. It develops like alien pupae into a marvellous piece of old-school tech death; Atheist’s masterpiece “Unquestionable Presence” springs to mind, or even Defeated Sanity’s own homage to progressive death metal “Dharmata”. But ah, there is a button marked “madness” just here, and Ingurgitating Oblivion are never too shy of pressing it. Once more we delve into the scything hurricane of technical wizardry, disintegrating all within it’s path, leaving only scorchmarks and the silent howls of ghosts in it’s wake. The task nears completion; we grind slower, and armageddon beckons. Lille beats his toms like war drums heralding conquest. Guitars slam and chug, never heavier, flattening what little life remains on the surface of the earth. It’s monstrous, tectonic in it’s heaviness. And then...it’s done. We close as we began, a lone horn ushering us to closure, as though lowering the shroud, locking the mausoleum door, and wandering into the blackness waiting outside.
“Ontology of Nought” is a weaponised juggernaut of an album, the type of thing prog legends Yes might have written had they stumbled on a pile of Portal albums. I love this thing profoundly, I want to hollow it out and live in it. It’s like staring into the maw of a Lovecraftian elder god. I cannot say enough good things about it. This breed of progressive disso-death always treads a fine line, at any point capable of devolving into a caliginous mess, disconcerting but undecipherable and lacking in memorability for it. But Ingurgitating Oblivion’s command of melody, fury and pure compositional aptitude prevents this from being so. Is it too long? Probably. 73 minutes is a hefty chunk of time, and I don’t think “...Lest I Should Perish with Travel, Effete and Weary, as My Knees Refuse to Bear Me Thither” measures up to the majesty of the rest of the release, but on the whole this is an astonishing piece of work, and I would recommend – nay, command, implore, beseech on bended knee – that you listen to it if you are interested in extreme metal.
