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Ingrain > Aembers > Reviews > NausikaDalazBlindaz
Ingrain - Aembers

A good debut offering of post-BM / blackgaze - 72%

NausikaDalazBlindaz, June 15th, 2016

Not for the first time and certainly not for the last time I've allowed myself to be sucked into listening to an EP or album, in this case the debut recording by Ingrain, by the cover: it's a lovely Christmas-looking picture of the reindeer with elven glitter and sprinkle being showered upon it. (And that shade of purple in the background is one of my favourite colours too.) For a band that's supposedly post-BM in musical orientation and hailing from Jerusalem in Israel, the cover is a surprise. The music is no less a surprise as well: for a debut, it's highly expressive in mood and can change quite quickly when the need arises.

The EP is short enough that it can be heard in one sitting and I'd encourage listeners to hear it all the way through without pause so as to appreciate Ingrain's strengths and musical range. It starts with a plaintive solo acoustic guitar melody and works its way through gentle mellow blues rock into tough and hard-bitten melodic raw BM, bitter vocal rasps, acid tremolo guitars and death metal blast-beat drumming and all. Threaded through the hard-hitting blackened death metal fusion are occasional if brief assays of acoustic guitar or mandolin, or shrill runaway lead guitar soloing of classic hard rock origins. The general impression all this leaves on me is almost akin to latter-day Carcass without (of course) the socio-political commentary or the cartoon psycho-medical splatter subject matter.

Things really get going with the second song "Fragmented Mind" where the band puts on full post-metal-jacket and displays most if not all its wares with hard-hitting force. On "Firmament" the musicians are a bit more laidback and showcase their ability to write and play stirring melodies and riffs in both metal and non-metal modes, and fire off some energetic lead solos. They probably need to take care not to cram individual songs with too much music from one extreme to another or the songs can lose their identity as music and end up merging into one another. If Ingrain had to release a single to promote this EP, "Firmament" with all its changes and one catchy riff or melody after another would certainly be ideal.

"To See" features alternating clean and BM vocals over sunny-sounding pop structures and rhythms, even if these are played on rough and slightly noisy BM tremolo guitars. There is a pleasant dreamy ambience, some nymph-like crooning in the background and even a slight trancey psychedelic effect in the noisy background tremolo grind. This really is a most schizophrenic song, at once bouncy and happy and featuring quite a lot of BM style elements as well.

I suppose if the aim of this EP is to promote Ingrain to interested labels specialising in post-BM/DM and blackgaze, then I think it's just a matter of time before the band gets picked up by a label. The music is varied in sound, style and mood and the band members show consistent skill and ability in playing and song composition. My only criticism would be that the songs and the style of music need more originality and something distinctive to set them off, something that tells you that this is Ingrain and not any other band playing in their chosen genre. As post-BM / blackgaze goes, this is a good if rather conservative recording.