Ibaraki

Rashomon

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ft. Nergal, Gerard Way.
Genre: Black Metal.
Released: 06/05/2022
Via Nuclear Blast

Album Review: Ibaraki – Rashomon

Ibaraki has been Trivium’ Matt Heafy’s solo project for a while now and now the world can finally hear what he’s been planning for so long. Straying away from his more conventional style, the album is dubbed as a Japanese Black Metal piece and was produced by Emperor’s Frontman Ihsahn. I had to check this out as it’s been such a long-awaited release so here are my thoughts on Ibarki’s ‘Rashomon’

Setting the mood for the entire album ‘Hakanaki Hitsuzen’ is an atmospheric instrumental track that acts as the calm before the storm. ‘Kagutsuchi’ swiftly follows and unleashes the unique blend of Japanese Black Metal upon the listener. Harrowing inhales dominate the track with the occasional appearance of soft vocals to add a bit of contrast to the music. The music almost has a theatrical element to it which gives the band a very unique sound.

Following that is ‘Ibaraki-Dōji’ which continues down a similar vein as the previous song. A more sinister tone looms over this track with the inhale screams sounding a lot more pronounced throughout the recording of this one. Blast beats are littered throughout this one before a surprisingly clean, melodic section breaks the carnage momentarily in the latter half of the song. ‘Jigoku Dayū’ opens with a sombre and clean feel to it before suddenly exploding into a much more ferocious track. The quick transition is executed really well and creates a vast contrast from each passage of the song.

‘Tamashii No Houkai’ is up next starting off with a video game sound bite before unleashing its unrelenting assault on the listener. If there’s a common theme throughout this album, it’s that the band know how to deliver an extremely heavy sound while maintaining melody and rhythm. ‘Akumu’ really embraces the blackened style by featuring vocalist Nergal of Behemoth lending his demonic esc vocals to the already hellish track while ‘Komorebi’ further solidifies the band’s ability to mix traditional-sounding clean with more barbaric sounding distortion to create something quite unlike anything I’ve listened to before.

This next song made a huge splash when released mainly due to the surprising feature of Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance unleashing some of his harshest vocals to date. ‘Rōnin’ opens with a more metalcore esc vibe with a lot of cleans matched with melodic guitar parts before Garard’s ungodly gutturals ambush the listener. The contrasting styles of this song really are a thing of beauty so I highly recommend giving this a whirl when you get the time. The penultimate track ‘Susan No Mikoto’ continues down the blacked vein but boasts some of Matt’s best vocals on the entire album. Hearing him singing perfectly in Japanese is quite the thing to hear and really adds to the track in my opinion. The final track ‘Kaizoku’ is probably the most out-there track on the album. A morbid love song of sorts matched with an extremely funky instrumental that wouldn’t be out of place in The Witcher. It’s certainly not what I expected from the album however it is somewhat fitting.

As a whole, the album is very good. Utilising unconventional sounds and techniques allows the album to sound extremely unique as opposed to the same generic sound that has become synonymous with the black metal scene. This release genuinely surprised me a lot at just how clean everything sounded and I look forward to seeing what lies ahead for this ambitious project.