You’re walking a tightrope between blood-boiling, heart racing desperation and the cold black lethargy of all consuming despair – hovering helplessly between burning up and burning out. You’re straining with every ounce of your being, tearing every tendon as you reach frantically for the light, but you’re locked in a constant war against the nightmares; a running battle with the devils who have taken over the endless passages, corridors and cells that make up the asylum of your mind. Drained of life, love and hope you stumble through the shattered bones of memory, searching the half forgotten smiling faces for a trace of warmth, a spark to rekindle your will to exist.
Roaring from the dark pits that lie hidden in the shadows alongside our paths through life come Scotland’s Ingraves – armed with the raw power of their debut EP, Human Abyss. Featuring five songs that explore the treacherous wastelands of human emotion, the shades of heartbreak, the textures of solitude. There is a ragged, bloody integrity to this release; an unquestionable honesty that won’t avert its eyes or flinch from the ugly, painful truth. From the throat rending screams and colossal depth charge riffs of ‘False Gods’ to the jagged structures of ‘Isolation’ – a track of cold discomfort wrapped in the impaling spikes of social rejection – this is not easy listening. The groove and sway of the muscular guitars in ‘Self Medicated’ invoke a slow dance of melancholy rhythms, while the measured relentlessness of ‘Stress Depress Repeat’ lands punch after punishing punch before collapsing into the rolling, cascading riffs of ‘Wake Up’. Bleakly intense metalcore that shows all its scars and demands that you do the same; there is no place for hiding your wounds here, no acceptance of false smiles or swimming in shallow waters. Yet there is strength to be found in the depths of this broken mirror if you’re brave enough to look, a companionship in the darkness that never seems to end.
Formed in the summer of 2018 and hitting the stage for the first time in autumn of the following year, Ingraves were starting to make real forward strides before the pandemic hit and rudely derailed their progress. However, rather than bewailing their fate, the band chose to dig deep and unearth the most breathtakingly intense songs of their fledgling career. The result of their work, their walk through the harshest of life’s lessons is the juddering, thundering beast that is Human Abyss – an EP that will test, challenge and confront you, but ultimately reward you with an exhilarating, life-affirming listening experience
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