aaamusic | On 13, Jan 2013

I’ve been doing this reviewing malarkey for roughly two and a half years now, and it’s a heartening thing that in all that time, I don’t feel I’ve found the weirdest band that I’ll ever listen to. Sure, there have been contenders to that crown, more than a few in fact, but for a while now I’ve known in my heart that whenever something comes along that is so surreal that it makes me thankful to be a music fan, I know that in a matter of weeks, months tops, something will come along to steal that crown. This, dear readers, will be a hard one to top. A genre shredding, cross continent headfuck of glorious proportions, I.R.O.K play a frantic jumble of punk, samples, and afro-beat that, this early in the year, could quite easily qualify as some of the most exciting music released in it come this time next year.
Of course, this is just my opinion, and I.R.O.K are the very definition of an acquired taste, not only do they sound like a party that The King Blues and Enter Shikari are DJ’ing at, but they’re also easily as political and open about it as the previous two bands mentioned, one only needs to take a cursory glance at their Tumblr account where, at the time of writing, the first picture you see is one accusing the British government of hiding an Illuminati symbol in the very structure of London itself. Pretty serious stuff but this, their debut album manages to straddle the point where incredible seriousness crosses over with utter ridiculousness in its reach and how much it tries to get away with. Take opener I Work, by itself it crosses rave-y synths with an almost comedy-metal guitar riff that’s purest Slayer, singer Mike Title’s chewy Lahndahn by way of Morocco accent that sounds like Damon Albarn if he actually came from East London, propulsive rhythms and some of the most catchy gang vocals I’ve ever heard. And that’s in the course of three minutes and fifteen seconds. And that’s not even touching the rest of the album, which touches on spoken word, ambient, samples from everything from the news to porn films, and loads more stuff that I don’t listen to enough world music or underground techno to even contemplate. And for some reason, it doesn’t sound baffling. It doesn’t sound obtuse or like it’s built to be as difficult to listen to as possible, with all these contrasting and sometimes downright weird attributes being hurled together like a Large Hadron Collider for stuff that’ll scare a Coldplay fan shitless, it sounds like a huge party that every right minded individual is invited to.
Believe me, for fans of uncompromising, intelligent music that’ll still set pulses racing at twenty paces, I can think of nothing better. This is the best kind of experimental music, the kind that bends and twists obstinate noises into thrilling pop songs and yeah, it might be difficult to properly love in the way that most pan-continental “Violent psychotropic afro-punk” (according to their Facebook page) bands would be due to sheer force and fierceness, but you’ll have one hell of a great time with I.R.O.K whatever your musical inclination is, and to see them live could quite possibly be a soul quaking experience. Again, if you want some genuinely uncompromised music you can jump around like a crazy person to, you can’t go wrong here. Highly recommended.

★★★★★

Will Howard