Review:
Here is another record that I almost skipped over after a first listen. The first time I popped in Imbroglio's The Oncoming Swarm, I wrote it off as a clutter mess of grind garbage. It wasn't until the 2nd and beyond listens that I really embraced the chaos that this record is.
Originally from Dayton and now residing in Syracuse, Imbroglio could probably claim that they live in New England and that each band member is the offspring of Jacob Bannon (of Converge) and Guy Kozowyk's (of The Red Chord) secret love affair. There is no denying that Converge and the entire Blackmarket Industries had a huge influence on this band. Most of the record is of a pseudo-grind nature that is very reminiscent of something like Ed Gein. There are countless amounts of injections of atmospheric elements that seemed like they were plucked from Gaza's leftovers. The guitars are immensely sluggish and provide a chaotic jumbled mess of notes and chords that sound like a genuine psycho wrote each riff. The drummer pounds away at an equally frantic pace. Singer William Fecke sounds like every blood vessel in his face is going to explode everytime he barks out his shrilling vocals. The energy this band gives off is similar to what I've been described as taking speed is like.
Amidst all the chaos, however, it's a sense of structure. If the album was a complete disorganized hodgepodge then I wouldn't continue to listen to it. I'd compare its chaos meets balance structure to the nature of a Pig Destroyer record. Pig Destroyer writes albums as if they were locked in a closest for weeks with nothing but Methamphetamine and PCP to ingest and made to write a record during that time. The result is usually the musically equivalent of orchestrated Armageddon. Imbroglio does a good job of keeping up with, but not surpassing.
If Converge didn't experiment too much and just stuck to writing a sludgy-grind record this would be the end result. Hopefully this band jumps on a tour with any one of the bands I listed throughout the review. I'm interested in how they hold up in a live setting. Recommended for anyone that wants a little disorder in their life.
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