Metal Music and the Absurd

Thoughts on Submissions While Listening to Igorrr

My favorite French metal band Igorrr released their latest album Amen recently, and I’ve been listening to it on repeat. While basking in its melodic screaming, I thought about music as a method of storytelling and realized there are parallels between what I love the most about this band and what we enjoy finding in our submissions at Weird Lit.

It’s hard to describe Igorrr’s sound. Metal, for sure, but many songs also feature a strong classical influence with the use of baroque-style violins riffs and operatic singing. Some play with digital sound in a way that I can only compare to dubstep, though the effect tends to be more frenetic than the standard pulsing bass you’d expect from electronic music today. Igorrr also often utilizes traditional instruments like the dung-chen (heard at the beginning of “Infestis”), a Tibetan brass horn used in Buddhist ceremonies. Their songs explore soundscapes, expanding the edges of the boxes that are music genres. Gautier Serre, the mastermind behind the band, recorded a full choir in a monastery where he sampled experimental sound textures, like having half the choir pitching up while the other half were pitching down, creating an unsettling, wobbly feeling.

Layering genres is only part of the puzzle that is Igorrr and their sound. So many of their songs feel unequivocally absurd, even avant-garde (how appropriately French). Their music provokes. When listening to an Igorrr song for the first time, you might feel uncomfortable. The song “Very Noise” from their 2020 album Spirituality and Distortion sounds exactly like the title suggests. This is what we love to see when we’re poring over submissions: things that make us feel. We like “weird” because it allows for expansiveness and exploration. Igorrr embodies this. Gautier says he wants to push his instruments, push the sound and push the music, and he means it. The song “Headbutt” ends with the sound of a piano being played by an excavator. Yes, really. 

The absurdity isn’t random or a trick for shock and awe either; the nonsense is the thread that makes Igorrr Igorrr, and the decisions are intentional. It’s totally absurd to have made a gong out of a giant rusty saw blade, but its deep, atmospheric sound absolutely adds to the theme of the album. And I can’t help but laugh when a dark, aggressive song like “Mustard Mucous” is interrupted by what sounds like a child playing a recorder, shining a flash of light in an otherwise gloomy track, letting us have a breather before diving back down into the depths. Like good nonsense literature, it is there intentionally but leaves space for the audience to fill in the gaps. It creates an atmosphere that lets you decide how you feel about what you just experienced and what it means—if anything. 

I encourage you to take a lesson from Igorrr and play with absurdity, push boundaries, and defy genres. Experiment with punctuation (or a lack thereof), like in “Fives Hours to Wilmington.” Have characters be absolutely ridiculous, like in “Please, God, Don’t Let Dogs Die Anymore.” Make your readers squirm a little with how uncomfortable your nonsense makes them upon first glance, like in “To Rundle the Parlous Hoon.” 

Our next submission window is open from October 15–December 1, and we’re excited for another round of absurdity, nonsense, and experimental fun.

If you want to read more about our thoughts on these genres, check out Senior Editor Dina’s post about nonsense literature and Senior Editor Fawn’s about the avant-garde. And if you want to know more about the making of Igorrr’s latest album and what ridiculous measures they took to create it, this video includes even more wild instruments than I mentioned here.