Challenging. If there’s one word to describe this new effort from Ingurgitating Oblivion, that would be it. Not just a challenging album to listen to and try to make sense of, but the challenge of reviewing it without sounding way out of my depth is a feat that I’ve yet to come across since joining Nine Circles. Dizzying rhythms, layers upon layers of dissonance and technicality, and a heaping dose of jazz influence, this album is an exercise in patience that stretches the limits of death metal far beyond the accepted bounds of the genre. A disjointed mishmash of ideas, or a genre-bending avant-garde masterpiece? Let’s find out. This is Ontology of Nought.

IO is the brainchild of founding member and primary composer Florian Engelke and Norbert Müller, with the guitarist duo joined on Ontology of Nought by session members Lille Gruber (Defeated Sanity) on drums and Tom “Fountainhead” Geldschläger (ex-Obscura) on lead guitars — a slew of additional session musicians round out the vast non-traditional instrumentation featured on the album. Describing the music of Ingurgitating Oblivion is no easy task, but I’ll try my best. Frenetic riffs that start and stop on a whim, alternating between low chugs and high-register daggers of ear-piercing dissonance, accompanied by gurgling growls and the wild, shredfest solos of Geldschläger (on the first two tracks at least) — just as you might make sense of where a death metal section is headed, the band transitions to a clean, jazzy section led just as much by piano as by Geldschläger’s signature fretless guitar (“To Weave the Tapestry of Nought”). Both the anchor and driving force on Ontology of Nought, however, is the phenomenal drumming of Lille Gruber, who puts on an absolute masterclass of both death metal and jazz, effortlessly guiding the listener through the various styles on display; if anything the non-metal segments are the most impressive, as they are tailor-made for Gruber to shine with his mind-bending rhythms and fills.

As high-quality as the musicianship of Ontology of Nought is, my opinion on the production is something I go back and forth on perhaps even more than the songwriting itself. The heavy guitars are pretty muddy and compressed yet simultaneously fill out so much of the sonic landscape, almost reaching the point of detracting from the rest of the mix — when it comes to the points of the most extreme dissonance, the sound is not too far removed from raw noise. On the flipside, the softer sections are mixed perfectly, with Gruber’s drums taking the reins; guest vocalist Ava Bonham’s multi-layered, eerie cleans on tracks like “…Lest I Should Perish with Travel, Effete and Weary, as My Knees Refuse to Bear Me Thither” join Gruber as one of the better aspects of these softer sections as well. Production aside, at 73-minutes in length — five tracks all between 10-18 minutes — Ontology of Nought is not for the impatient or faint of heart. Aside from having an incredible title, closer “The Barren Earth Oozes Blood, and Shakes and Moans, to Drink Her Children’s Gore” is probably the most palatable song on the album for those interested in what this album has to offer, feeling more like a standard technical/progressive death metal song at some points at least.

When trying to get a better sense of this as a whole it’s hard not to compare it to this year’s undeniable peak of dissonant/technical death metal, which is of course Ulcerate’s Cutting the Throat of God. That album is certainly not the most easily digestible metal either, but Ontology of Nought takes things to a whole new level. Whereas the former draws a pretty perfect line between accessibility and forward thinking songwriting, Ingurgitating Oblivion forge full speed ahead into uncharted territory. If it were not for the heavy guitars and harsh vocals it certainly wouldn’t qualify as a metal album, even if you kept in the blast beats and shredding guitar solos. Metal has had jazz influences for decades at this point, but few bands (that I’m aware of, at least) have gone full bore into chaotic, avant-garde jazz territory such as this album does. Whether it works or not is up to the listener to decide, but rest assured you haven’t heard anything like this in 2024.

— Colin

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Ontology of Nought will be available September 27 on Willowtip Records. For more information on Ingurgitating Oblivion, visit their official website.