[Some albums require the help from a friend. The harrowing dissonance and existential deathly throes of Ingurgitating Oblivion‘s newest offering required such assistance from a mysterious figure named Scoopmeister. These are his words…]
After an agonizing seven-year wait, German avant-garde death metal maestros Ingurgitating Oblivion are finally back with their newest monstrosity, Ontology of Nought. Incorporating the knotty technicality of Gorguts and the jazzy undercurrents of Imperial Triumphant into a brand of dissonant madness that’s entirely its own, this 73-minute, 5-track behemoth dwarfs its predecessor, 2017’s already extraordinary, sprawling Vision Wallows in Symphonies of Light. Ontology of Nought is quite a bit nastier and denser, too; where Vision Wallows was often contemplative, even serene, Ontology’s moments of tranquility are relatively scarce.
Opener “Uncreation’s whirring loom…” sets the tone. An eerie, fluttering flute intro gives way to a moody guitar line, before the track erupts into a wall of churning dissonance. Much of Ontology continues in this vein, with stretches of technical insanity, ferocious growls, and wild guitar solos, punctuated by calmer, jazz-inflected interludes and bouts of esoteric spoken word. Though an extremely compositionally dense experience, Ingurgitating Oblivion’s deft songwriting maintains a sense of unpredictability and structural looseness throughout that has kept me engaged across repeated listens. This is helped in no small part by returning session drummer Lille Gruber (Defeated Sanity), whose talent for alternating precision blasting with a jazzier, more improvisational flair is second-to-none. Ontology of Nought’s pacing remains consistently excellent, too. New sections appear at just the right time to keep things interesting. “Lest I should perish…” lands as the most left-field moment during which guest vocalist Ava Bonam’s ethereal voice, foreshadowed in the previous two tracks, takes center stage. It’s the gentlest song by far, and on a lesser album that didn’t handle its twists and turns as well the tonal shift might have come across as jarring. But Ingurgitating Oblivion make it fit by allowing dissonant guitars to gradually build until they threaten to drown Bonam out — a rare moment of fragility on an otherwise imposing album.
Potential issues are few and minor. While Ingurgitating Oblivion typically balance the disparate sections of each track successfully, they do have a tendency to allow more ambient moments — particularly those that close out tracks two and three — to drag on a little longer than necessary without adding anything new to already lengthy compositions. The production is also more claustrophobic than on Vision Wallows. While this feels a deliberate choice, one which works with the grittier tone on Ontology, it does mean that the long runtime can be a fatiguing listen. Despite these quibbles, Ingurgitating Oblivion have created something special with Ontology of Nought. If you have the patience to unravel it, this newest addition to Ingurgitating Oblivion’s catalog is a more than worthy successor to Vision Wallows, which still stands as one of my favorite albums of the last decade. Ontology of Nought should go down in the metalverse as amongst the most important and challenging releases of 2024.
