Album Review: IAH, V
Digitally released by the Argentina trio and due for a vinyl issue in early 2024 through Kozmik Artifactz, the fifth release from IAH, titled simply V, finds the band recommitting to their core approach while at the same time expanding their reach. The instrumentalist outfit with the returning lineup of guitarist/synthesist Mauricio Condon, bassist Juan Pablo Lucco Borlera and drummer José Landín have both pulled back into themselves as compares to 2021’s Omines (review here), which boasted collaborations with members of Poland’s Spaceslug and guest strings and was over an hour long. Two years later, IAH are able to transpose progressive textures onto their heavy riffing roots as 10-minute opener/longest track (immediate points) “Kutno” makes its impression with sharp snaps of snare and guitar/bass chug after the synthy drone intro and moves in its second half to a hypnotic and languid stretch of psychedelic contemplation before reality interrupts at 8:21 and they bookend with heavier chugging topped with a solo.
Precision and looseness. Tension and release. Severity and soothing. The band, who once again worked with co-producer Mario Carnerero at Gran Rosa Estudio, have made these essential components since their 2017 self-titled debut EP (review here), and V recalls that dynamic early, with hints dropped toward progressive metal but an offsetting circle around in the central riff of “Kutno” that keeps the groove rolling. To leadoff your record with a song that takes up nearly a quarter of its 41-minute runtime is no minor choice, but IAH have a history in that regard, though “Kutno” stands out for being more relatively extended than, say, closer “Las Palabras y el Mar” at 8:45, than some other long-openers have been in the past.
What does song length tell you in this case? Primarily how long the song is. To find out just about anything else requires hearing. “Madre de los Suspiros” follows “Kutno” with a creeper line of guitar and vague whispers of noise, cymbal crashes and an emergent movement at about a minute in that is both densely weighted and hypnotic. A threatening chug is complemented by higher plucked lead notes, but those soon are swallowed by the maw of the riff brought by the next change; a declining lumber that opens to a more hopeful sans-vocal hook that it makes positively swaggering by second time through, thud of drums and echoing tones giving spaciousness that feels well earned, another late solo taking hold to sort of expand the back half as they wind down what feels like a statement of who they are as a band made to themselves as well as their audience.
A little Karma to Burn in that midsection’s willfully straightforward riffing? Maybe. But by digging as deeply as they are into their style — by doubling-down as they are, particularly after the branching out of Omines — they own it. Listening to V, IAH sound poised and confident in what they’re doing. It’s their fourth LP, and as they shift from “Madre de los Suspiros” into the quiet outset of the eight-minute “Yaldabaoth,” which follows a similar structure to “Kutno” with grounded chug shifting into a calmer middle building to an apex, but in “Yaldabaoth,” that crescendo takes the form of post-rock shimmer-sprawl, evocative even as the drums beneath keep a decent clip, and ending to fit easily with the standalone echoing guitar piece “Sono io!” (1:44), an interlude and presumed side B intro that offers emotional presence and a breather moment before the blindside punch of chug from “Sentado en el Borde de una Pregunta.”
The penultimate cut on the six-tracker brings together the chug that’s been there all the while with a more insistent thrust in the drums, feeling urgent in its first half as it touches on proggier rhythmmaking without giving up the heavy nod, until at 2:46 a crash and stop brings standalone bass deep in the mix, soon enough joined by the drums and atmospheric guitar drawn overtop. While striking on paper, the suddenness of that change when one is actually hearing the album is hardly jarring. IAH simply going from one place to another. They’ve done it several times throughout V by “Sentado en el Borde de una Pregunta,” and the intensity of their return — the album’s genuine breakout-and-run moment — is a payoff serving for more than just the lone track in question. They carry it into a long fade and synth arrives to guide the transition into “Las Palabras y el Mar,” which resets to softer guitar at its beginning.
In the incorporation of synthesizer here, IAH highlight the ambience of V and their style generally while finding a new outlet for it. “Las Palabras y el Mar” plays with the underlying structure of the tracks a bit, with a flowing start shifting into heavier guitar before three minutes in, and even as it solidifies into a chug, much of the (relative) shove behind “Sentado en el Borde de una Pregunta” has dissipated, and a meta-echo — also some real echo — of the post-rock vibe in “Yaldabaoth” reinforces the idea of cognizance on the part of the band. Which is to say, they know what they’re doing. V‘s finale drops the heft in its second half, brings some back for a not-overblown epilogue, and end with melancholy standalone guitar, resonant with effects or synth behind it and consistent in terms of mood with much of what precedes.
This is a band who have found their sound, who know it, and who have purposefully set themselves to refining it and exploring around it while holding to the sphere they’ve marked as their own. One of V‘s greatest appeals is that it paints a sustainable portrait of what they do. With five offerings in six years, IAH have worked at a prolific pace up to now and there’s nothing to say that won’t continue, but V is mature and set in itself in a way that a first or second, even a third record generally can’t be, and that maturity includes the sense of ongoing creative evolution. The synth here is an easy example, and it might be that synth becomes more of a factor in the future and it might not, but that sensibility extends to the dynamic and chemistry between the members of IAH as well as to the places their material is willing to go and the textures being explored. They have never yet been so much their own thing as they are here.
