Project Juggernaut: Ink Sonata

By RingMaster Review on July 2, 2012 • ( 0 )

The long awaited new album from Canadian industrial metal band Project Juggernaut is not for those with a weak backbone. Scared of what creeps in your personal dark and reluctant to explore your own shadows, then stay clear as Ink Sonata goes there and beyond across its fourteen intrusive and challenging at times nasty lingering soundscapes. The album opens the doors to their and your demons with sounds as malicious and conniving as the presences whispering malcontent from the dark. Simply it is an outstanding pit borne storm of destructive and inciteful blackened imagination.

Ink Sonatais not an easy listen from beginning to end but it is fully rewarding and one of the most exciting industrial

artwork by @richardbriceland.

releases to emerge this year. It tests the senses with the clear intent to awaken and ignite emotions and thoughts which should lay dormant, the striking and violating sounds spawn from the darkest breath and passions. The follow up to Technoir of 2010, the new album finds the band evolved not only in quality and songwriting but in their ability to twist and wind up the psyche with blistered and captivating invention. It is an album you will remember if not for any particular track or moment but for its persistent and fully expansive manipulation of your emotions.

Since forming in 2009 the London Ontario trio of vocalist Jay Cromie, Jeremy Chaulk (The Vaya Project) on programming, and guitarist RobbieK, have brought distinct elements of industrial, electro, and metal into a maelstrom of inventive and dehabilitating emotional riots brought with a melodic scorching. The new album finds them with a deeper caustic touch and vindictive nature and is quite glorious leading one to declare as much as previous work was impressive it pales next to Ink Sonata.

The album unleashes the darkness from the first notes of opener God Less, the track enveloping with a shadowed awakening and electric scuzzy energy which sears the ear immediately. Once the vocals of Cromie surge with annihilatory intent the track just grasps the senses with a devious yet enlightening ambience, even if it is into shadows best left untouched. With serpentine whispers and scathing electronics scraping every cell it is an epic start. It is not particularly catchy it any point but wholly infectious throughout like the strongest most dehabilitating virus.

The great start is elevated with the excellent Psychotic. The song treats the ear with a guitar beckoning at first which as beats and subdued vocal inserts fill the air leads like a piper into the heart of the track. The song then sends eruptions of a raging disturbed mind/energy cascading through the senses matched by the anthemic pull of its chorus and ruptured sensibility in the teasing probing electro additives. It all leads to one to wonder if such poison should be so irresistible, the album continually gives its indisputable answer.

Across the release some tracks emerge with a greater hold on the heart than others though never is there a moment when things slip below the initial high quality, either matching or rising beyond. Songs like the filth caked rocker Dirty Sister and the spiteful Lemon Face take one down vindictive corridors to test the evil and tolerance of thought and emotions. They are insistently provocative and ensure the journey is treacherous to sanity and heart but are a rewarding match to the more accessible songs, if one can use such a word on such an overall hellacious masterpiece.

Sahara all shadowed Eastern promise and sinister fascination is a song which ignites one of the hottest fires within. Hypnotically beautiful whilst criminally abusive the track is a murderous gem which alone shows how much stronger the band has ignited their cruellest and most mesmeric creative fire. To be fair every song deserves a mention such the quality and invention they offer. A deeply diverse and perpetually twisting animal beneath its exacting surface, Ink Sonata never for an instant leaves one sidetracked by outside interference with each visit to its black heart more revealing and rewarding.

Tracks like the aural emotional toxin Abuse, the acidic warmth fuelled title track, and the colossal brute that is Daedalus, all leave one gasping for air beneath their stunning enterprise and intensity whilst Open My Eyes is just magnetic malevolence and a definite favourite.

Project Juggernaut has returned with their finest hour and a major addition to the genre which leaves many other releases quaking in their wake. Ink Sonata is a quite delicious masterful ruin of your mind and emotions. Who knew abuse could be this brilliant.

https://www.facebook.com/projectjuggernaut

Watch out for tracks from Ink Sonata on future Bone Orchard shows from The Reputation Radio Show

RingMaster 02/07/2012