Ingurgitating Oblivion – Vision Wallows in Symphonies of Light (Review)

This is the third album from this German death metal band.

Ingurgitating Oblivion’s second album Continuum of Absence was notable, enjoyable, and distinctly non-standard, offering doom-infused dissonance that was a bit different and had something extra to offer the listener.

Here we are three years later, and as good as that record was, Vision Wallows in Symphonies of Light is on another scale entirely.

How on earth to describe this? Just go listen to it, if you can wrap your mind around the labyrinthine avenues it travels down. This is an epic journey of progressive, dissonant, avant-garde death metal, replete with doom influences and twisted piano, along with some other less-common death metal accoutrements.

It’s as if you took bands like Gorguts, Ulcerate, and Deathspell Omega, stuck them all on steroids and then got them to perform the musical equivalent of a record-breaking deadlift. Or something. I dunno. Maybe a full world’s strongest man competition would be a better analogy, as a single deadlift is over far too quickly.

Those bands are all known for their high-quality and boundary-pushing musical adventures, of course, and are no slouches in the creativity department either. With this latest album Ingurgitating Oblivion are more than worthy of rubbing shoulders with them that’s for sure.

Vision Wallows in Symphonies of Light album is 52 minutes in length and only has four songs, the longest one being the absolute behemoth of a second track – A Mote Constitutes What to Me Is Not All, and Eternally All, Is Nothing – which is a whopping 23 minutes in length. In the hands of a lesser band lengthy songs like this would be wasted and a recipe for disaster. However, Ingurgitating Oblivion have more than proved by now that they know what they’re doing, and all of the songs here are packed with content and interesting, if foreboding, ideas, and skillful deliveries.

Complex structures and intricate writing are adeptly used by the band to create their dark soundscapes. Full of cold atmospheres and malevolent auras, these tracks seem to crush the life and soul from anyone or anything near them. I have no idea why this seems like such a good thing, but listening to the band and the creeping feeling of dread that they evoke, I can’t help but feel that it somehow must be. After all, why else would I keep listening to this…?

Vision Wallows in Symphonies of Light is harsh and bleak in all of the right ways. Revelling in an unfettered creativity that the band have been developing without restraint, this is an album that once more pushes the furthest reaches of what death metal is capable of.

Challenging, harrowing, essential.