Girih – Ikigai
Release Date: 14th October 2022
Label: Dunk! Records/A Thousand Arms Music
Bandcamp
Genre: Post Metal, Experimental.
FFO: Russian Circles, Caspian, Toundra, If These Trees Could Talk.
Review By: Andy Spoon
I think that one of the best subgenres of the metal scene is the wonderful world of post-metal, where these extreme metal artists who have great experience and influence listening to bands like Cannibal Corpse, Dissection, or Cattle Decapitation reach out into the ether and find ways to inject their own world into a more “musical” venture. Many of these artists join acts that play another type of extreme metal, such as a death metal drummer playing in a black metal project, a black metal guitarist starting a thrash or grindcore band, or even vocalists jumping between death metal and doom metal.
Post metal is interesting as there is a blend between ambient tones, hollow and distant reverb, slow and menacing tempos, and lack of vocals in any form. There is a musical dynamic created that is full of holes and gaps by design. The listener is forced to engage in a battle of focus between the dynamic shifts of the instruments and the totality of the song as it plays, or even the flow of the album as a whole. There is a much-greater need for musical dynamics to flow well, rather than simply create tension and rhythm. In a sense, post-metal blends softer, more emotive music with the influences of the musicians who generally want to keep guitars and drums heavy, bass fuzzy, and the mood, super intense (while managing to stay slow)
Ikigai starts out as any post-metal album should, with mountains of reverb, clean guitars, and slow-but-driving drums. Songs start quiet, with restraint, but build into giant crescendos that encompass the listener in that proverbial “wall of sound” that is so-often employed in these post metal projects. Ikigai seems to (mostly) follow the post-rock format to a “t”, but breaks into moments of extreme metal fury that pushes the boundary beyond post-rock into something that is absolutely metal-inspired. For most listeners, it would be easy to pick up where the extreme metal influences come in (and I won’t point them out here just yet) as certain rhythmic techniques are trademarks of EM.
Most of the tracks start especially slow and gentle, build up into a “verse” structure, then fall back to a low and quiet resolve in the tempo, before building up again. Structurally, there are phrases in the tracks which work like “verses”, “choruses” and “bridges”, often reprising parts strategically to make each song flow in waves like most tracks with vocals tend to do. It seems to just follow the old western rock and roll flow of music, always accompanied by a massive crescendo at the end of the track. The twist is the “feel” of a heavy metal root to most of the tracks in the dark, moody resolving notes, the haunting melodies that carry a lot of tension, and the poignant “noise” that is created through the rhythm instruments at just the right times.
I didn’t find anything particularly noteworthy on most of the tracks, as it all seemed to find quite a bit of “rhythm” as Ikigai progressed. I enjoyed what I was listening to, but on some level, I was just given multiple tracks of the same idea, except on repeat. I would have liked to experience some genuine variation in the album, as some of the tracks just ran together, both in format and in “tone”. I honestly don’t know if I could tell you the names of more than a couple of tracks because of the unique things that they feature. I think that I would have preferred to hear a guest vocal from an associated act on a couple of the tracks to really help with shaking up the tone.
Best Track – The Ring
(2.5 / 5)
