IPERYT – The Patchwork Gehinnom
This one really surprised me. I had heard some whispers of Poland’s IPERYT (which translates from Polish to mustard gas) before, but the genre of “industrial metal” has all but buried itself. Why? There’s been a big push towards the so-called “organic” in music, including all forms of metal. This is really part of the same rise of interest in the olden days of underground culture, such as the resurgence of vinyl and cassette. It’s a constant searching for something “tangible” and “real” so that industrial, which is more properly connected to the EDM and EBM genres now, feels too artificial to fit within this current. Any time I’ve seen the word ‘industrial’ associated with any submission I receive it has not been jokingly bad, but actually bad every…single…freaking…time. Today that has changed, thankfully. IPERYT is on to something here, and though their newest, The Patchwork Gehinnom, just barely made the coveted status of “canon” material on this site, it does for a good reason.
IPERYT follow the traditional industrial aesthetic of machines and technology combined with quasi-militant stage presence and themes. Some bands of this nature come dangerously close to being social-media shamed with their usage of imagery, whereas others are able to touch on the theme of “totalitarianism” without the risk. IPERYT are one of the few I’ve seen do this, perhaps one of two, the other being NKVD, without losing their identity to negative symbols or just plain silliness. Part of this is that they take the image of the militant and use it in a general sense, to where, seeing pictures of them live, for example, you could place them in nearly any part of the world and it would fit as an image of military power. You can also clearly see this in the art, done by the currently unknown and obscure Abhavakala. If you check out the vinyl pictured below, for example, the propaganda-poster texture to the images is a dead giveaway. But, and there’s the other thing, musically they do things differently.
The Patchwork Gehinnom is unabashed about its technological feel. There is no effort by the band to hide the drum machine or electronics, they stay front-and-center with the rest of the music, and there is no element of organic to any of it. This has been a trend as of late for such bands, to avoid sounding artificial, but IPERYT does not sound artificial, they sound technological, and that’s an important distinction. What they have done here is found the perfect form of industrial metal for the modern day. They take risks with their sound, they don’t hide its essence, and they can and will surprise the unsuspecting listener with how they combine typical metal structures with industrial structures, creating something surprisingly fresh in the end. Tracks like “Scars are Still Sexy” easily showcase this, with the marching quality to the tempo, which is combined with guitars far more atmospheric than one would expect and vocals delivered like a dictator. Or try “Mindtaker,” which combines shrieking guitars with a mysterious electronic sweep that’s simply perfect. Their earlier work is not nearly as strong as this one, so if this is the future, by all means keep it there. If they create more memorable riffs the next time around, for the ones here are sometimes only noticeable for their ingenuity or raw power, industrial metal has a new scion.
Written by Stanley Stepanic
IPERYT – The Patchwork Gehinnom
Pagan Records
4.5 / 5
