By Jase Walker
It’s Thursday night and it’s about to get very weird in Utrecht as Igorrr makes a stop here tonight to unleash their own unique brand of bizarre genre bending noise upon the sold out crowd. Their latest album, ‘Amen’, has been on my very heavy rotation since it dropped last year and seeing them steadily progress up the stage sizes over time sees them taking the Ronda stage in Tivoli Vredenburg with a 1.5k cap. I’ve got my usual perch on the balcony because I’m a mix of feeling the age in my legs and not wanting to have my vision obscured by the ridiculously tall demographic of the Dutch.
For the tour they’ve got Thoughtcrimes and DVNE in tow, the latter of which had a pretty big impact on me at Euroblast last year so I’m always keen on another round of delicious post-metal. As for Thoughtcrimes, they’re an entirely new one to me so I’m keen to see what a band worthy of being opener for someone like Igorrr will bring to the table.
Thoughtcrimes barely even signal their walk on before breaking the silence with screaming “UTREEECHT!” and giving a quick introduction. I’m giving it a moment to sink in because within about a minute of the opening salvo there’s a few different stylistic influences on show and I can’t quickly pick out what they’re about.
Little bits of black metal in there, some bits sounding a bit more on the hardcore end of things and others waist deep in atmospheric post-metal. Moments that flick between The Ocean and others erring on the side of Rolo Tomassi, it’s brash and noisy, loud and in your face, chaotic but with a dash of atmosphere. I’m actually going to have to check if these have ended up on the Arctangent festival lineup and I’ve somehow missed it because this sort of weirdness is a solid fit for that festival’s theme.
Just when things were going quite well, their live show is suddenly interrupted by one of the loudest speaker faults I think I’ve ever heard, the sort of sound you get when a lead gets ripped out of an amp before the PA is shut off to prevent damaging people’s hearing. For what it’s worth the band sees the song through to the end and the crowd cheers them, this technical fault doesn’t seem to be going away easily though, looks to be pretty serious and I’ve never heard a PA system make a noise like that in my entire gig-going history. Fortunately it didn’t take long and they’re on their way, I was genuinely thinking that’d be a set ending fault for a moment there.
What started as a room looking a bit vacant and a shaky start, the band doesn’t seem to have let it knock their confidence much and have pushed through to the end to a pretty resounding success. When you’ve got 30 minutes the last thing you need is the PA system exploding but they weathered it in the best possible way and did a bang up job on the whole. I suppose that’ll be the post-show chatter for the evening sorted.
The start of DVNE was perhaps a bit odd because it looks like they’re being a bit cautious about the sound, you can hear the levels of the band being adjusted a bunch as they kick off. This does seem to eventually even out as they get a bit more comfortable so I can appreciate they’re not keen on a rerun of the earlier issues.
Anyway, if you’re into bands that float around similar sounds like The Ocean, Psychonaut, Hippotraktor and all that lovely stuff that Pelagic Records specializes in then you need to get your ears around these. Another band that sounds every bit as fat live as they do on their recorded material and then some.
Looking around the room you can definitely tell this is a sold out show and people have been actively fighting for resale tickets by this point. It’s also fantastic seeing how many are clearly into DVNE as well with the more enthusiastic amongst the room predictably down the front and flinging their heads around to the rhythm, well, when they can latch onto it at least. The intricate weaving of melodic and rhythmic parts is what makes DVNE just so damn good to listen to, very much scratching the itch for me when I want to listen to a heavier band that adds in a nice flair of psychedelic whimsy into their sound.
Legitimately though every time I see DVNE I like them even more than the last time, they’re always upping their game that bit further and I become steadily more enamoured with them. The mix of layered vocals and droney segments, switching gears between ambient and harder moments, all mixes in to a huge reason about why I’m drawn to post-metal which DVNE epitomises.
Finally for the main course, Igorrr. The stage setup sporting three square raised platforms connected in a way that makes them appear to be diamond shaped with a selection of various drums across both ends. Across the back is their floating signature “I” with two figures either side that resemble Tolkien Ring Wraiths.
Prior to them starting, a heartbeat sound booms over the PA, steadily increasing in pace before kicking off the show with ‘Daemoni’. The wraiths on either side of the stage begin bellowing smoke from their “faces”, the black cloaked figure steadily approaches the audience before launching into screams. Shortly after a white cloaked figure approaches and belts out sublime operatic melodies before disappearing into the back again.
This is what I’m here for. Igorrr may be unabashedly weird but the mix of beautiful haunting opera vocals and guttural screams while the music hops between breakcore, black metal and odd baroque moments is what makes Igorrr so stunning. A really cool detail stands out to me in that the platforms for the stage have lighting behind them that when illuminated shows hand stains appearing to be trying to claw their way out.
Fifteen hundred people enthusiastically banging their heads while a pit in the middle goes crazy in a crowd of people that are already jammed shoulder to shoulder, this is exactly the vibe that Igorrr are all about. The unmistakable middle eastern feel of ‘Downgrade Desert’ begins and the crowd literally cannot contain their excitement, the pit grows ever more fierce!
And just in case anyone forgot how they’re originally a drum and bass act, this gets followed up with ‘ADHD’ which almost feels like the spiritual successor to ‘VERY NOISE’ which I don’t doubt will be in the set somewhere. By the time they get to ‘ieuD’ I can feel every single hair on my body beginning to prickle as I get full body goosebumps while their singers clash in a duet. Igorrr are a band that genuinely have no comparable other artist to really weigh them against, a truly remarkably unique band. The people in the pit clearly respect this as well because when the music changes to focus more on the operatic vocals, the put suddenly stops in reverence of her vocals or just changes to pirouettes instead.
Most of the time I’m usually annoyed at crowds that can’t clap along in time but not tonight as they’ve somehow managed clapping along in time to the intro of a song before the drums have even started, that’s seriously impressive. I feel like I’ve barely blinked and we’re on the encore though, spending most of the show locked in amazement or simply flinging my head around hard enough to give myself whiplash.
We know what’s coming, this isn’t the first rodeo for most people here by the looks and the man himself takes the stage to hype the crowd up. That’s right, it’s time for the madness of ‘VERY NOISE’ which arguably broke them into a much bigger platform in combination with the utterly fucking insane music video. We’re not done yet though, ‘Camel Dancefloor’ up next for some weird middle eastern vibe madness to lead us up to the finale of ‘Opus Brain’ to finish things off.
Igorrr remains to this day one of the most bizarre acts I’ve seen, utterly zany but totally engrossing in the best way. Fucking incredible band, everyone should see them at least once, you’ll never see anything like it.
- © Über Röck 2026.