Ibaraki – Rashomon (Double Black LP)

Finally here is the debut Ibaraki album entitled “Rashomon”. Ibaraki is a side project of Matt Heafy of Trivium. Ihsahnof Emperor and Matt have been working on this album for nearly adecade. Originally the project was called Mrityu and was worked on in between Trivium albums. This is a very personal album to Matt and focuses a lot on his Asian culture. Obviously with Ihsahn there are a lot of Black Metal parts, but this is a very unique album. It’s a very enjoyable album and a musical journey that has be be enjoyed from front to back, IMO. Given the close intertwining of Matt and TRIVIUM’s stories, you’d have thought the two would be inseparable, but not so, because IBARAKI – the name for a terrifying Japanese demon taken from feudal legend – is more than a solo record. As he tells it, it’s the end-result of a journey to find his voice. It’s personal, it’s deep, and as he explains, its inspirations include everything from an adoration for the extremes of black metal, to the exuberant storytelling of Gerard Way, to the adventuresome worldliness of tragic bon viveur Anthony Bourdain. It’s a reflection of his multifaceted interests as well as a profound affirmation of his Japanese-American identity, and one that led him to confront
one of his family’s most tragic moments. Like the artist behind it, there is much to the story of IBARAKI and it began with a timid email to one of black metal’s most revered and influential figures. More than an album simply inspired by Japanese mythology and folklore, to Matt, IBARAKI is – like so many things from the land of the rising sun – an album that exists on two levels. The imaginary and the literal. The layers of meaning also abound, as do demons both real
and imagined. Production, engineering, score composing and additional instruments by Ihsahn. Mixing and mastering by Jens Bogren.

Black double vinyl in gatefold.

Track List