Ihlo have come a long way since they originally formed nearly 10 years ago. They made huge waves with their 2019 debut Union, a record that explored deep themes about relationships and interconnectedness. On August 29th, Ihlo will release their sophomore record Legacy, an album 5 years in the making. Ihlo takes the template they created with Union and builds an incredibly fleshed out, unique, and powerful statement, as they explore grand existential themes with passion and melodicism. I spoke with Andy Robison about the past, present, and future of Ihlo, and we discuss Legacy in greater depth.
It’s been 5 years since Ihlo released Union. How do you feel you have grown and progressed as a band and as individuals over the last few years?
Since the release of Union and the subsequent live shows that have followed, there has definitely been some evolution in terms of what we think about our sound and how we would approach new material. There are some moments from Union that are quite fun to play live, while there are some other moments that maybe work better on the studio release alone. There was a little bit of thinking about how we could establish non-stop power, for lack of a better way of describing it, across both the live show and studio releases. Equally, while we’ve all grown and improved as musicians, we still have our limits and have tried to bear that in mind as a positive as it’s something that helps define our sound, rather than trying to be uber-prog and play really fast complicated stuff; that space between the two albums solidified that understanding of Ihlo.
How do these changes manifest sonically on the new record?
Union is a very clean sounding record. Written entirely “in the box”, digitally, using modern plugins and software to create really great sounding drums and bass, both of which were programmed by Clark and Phil respectively. We felt it could be quite sterile at times. While this was likely an attempt by us to make something that didn’t just sound like it was recorded in our bedrooms (which it definitely was), we wanted to ensure we had a little more life in this one. The drums are all recorded live, performed by Clark in an incredible sounding space, and Phil took extra time to craft much more involved bass lines and even used a nice lovely 5-string to record it. While the majority of the keys and ambience are still made using software synths, I tend to use a lot of not-very-traditional FX to make them a bit more gritty. I also reamped a lot of sounds through an old MikroKorg synth I used very briefly on Union. I think there’s a pretty cool blend of organic & techy sounds going on between the drum space and all the synths that creates the biggest sonic vibe on the album.
This album was co-written by the whole band. Tell us about that process- how do songs begin? Do individual members bring in ideas, or do you all three jam, or is it some combination of both?
We wrote 90% of this album the same way we wrote Union, which was all over filesharing methods. With the exception of ‘Source’ and maybe one or two other tracks, everything was written and produced in our own separate spaces, before being brought together and put into the melting pot. This has always worked really well for us, as we tend to be able to present more of the bigger picture than we maybe would trying it in person. Going back to the organic approach I mentioned before, doing some more jamming in the room together would be great to try in the future, but that sort of environment can sometimes lead to compromises. Either you may head down a particular route because it was the quickest simplest idea, or ideas get tossed aside because you weren’t able to present them in a more fleshed out way in person.
The album was recorded at The Arch Studios in Southport, a really amazing studio space. Tell us about why you decided to record there.
When Tom (Owner/Producer) reached out to us, we hadn’t really began to consider where we would record the drums, but as soon as we saw the place it just looked like a no-brainer! We wanted somewhere with a really big room, with someone who really knows what they’re doing. It was a very fun and insightful week for us, we’re itching to go back.
What most surprised you about the space?
We were surprised by how well the old church handled Clark’s demonic blast beats!
Press for this record mentioned that Union wore its influences on its sleeve to some extent, but Legacy “speaks in [Ihlo’s] own voice”. Can you explain that further?
We were still trying to figure out what we wanted to do while writing Union. ‘Reanimate’ was the first song written when we moved in this direction and while it’s a fun song with a lot of punch, is it necessarily an accurate snapshot of our sound? It wasn’t until the end of the album writing process when we finished ‘Hollow’ and ‘Coalescence’ that we began to figure out a bit more about how we wanted to approach being Ihlo. We’ve since taken that forward into Legacy and have tried to wear our influences a little less obviously on our sleeves. It’s still a big mish-mash of sounds from bands we love, but perhaps much more focused on the emotion and atmosphere, as opposed to just playing some cool syncopated riffs. We pushed ourselves to explore different sounds that we love and to experiment with things we thought sounded cool without worrying so much about what people would think and whether we thought it would bore them.
The presser explains that the album has a concept- a look at the near-future and the hollowness of technological progress. Tell us why you chose to delve into this topic, and how the theme manifests throughout the music and lyrics.
When we first started thinking of stories and concepts to have as a backdrop to the music, I wanted something that wouldn’t turn out to be as personal as Union ended up being. It was 2018, Black Mirror was probably still in vogue and it was interesting to imagine what sort of tech nonsense could be introduced that would be advertised as a benefit but actually be a detriment to the human experience. Then the pandemic happened and I found all of the conspiracy theories surrounding it to be so fascinating and entertaining to see. Because of this, the theme started to dive more into ideas of paranoia. There’s a persistent thread throughout the album that mentions some type of intrusive voice invading the character’s thoughts, influencing them one way or the other. Conceptually, it was cool to question whether it’s all in the narrator’s head or if it’s some type of corruption from technological augmentation. I thought this was a cool struggle to explore and by the end of the album’s production, the final framing is presented as a complex narrative about trying to remember how to be human when we’ve been pushed into a future we didn’t necessarily ask for, with ‘perks’ we didn’t need. With that in mind, I’d say that most of the songs can also work just as well without needing to be clued up on the themes and vague concept. They each tell their own part of the story when listened to individually.
Continuing on this theme- the album art seems very evocative and post-apocalyptic. Tell us about the artist, and how your vision for the album art was developed.
I had the rough image for the cover in my head for many years. One of the main points of imagery that kept coming back to me was the whole satellite/radio tower type thing, which was a big focal point in some of the conspiracy theories I mentioned earlier. I thought it was funny to have this idea that whatever was being broadcast from them could be a source of evil, of confusion, of literal poison to humanity, so I wanted to roll with that. I liked the imagery of this post-apocalyptic world being so grossly dense with junk and technological debris, all built and layered on top of the last piece of junk for the sake of expanding mankind’s need for convenience, for power, for control. In this case, for miscommunication and fearmongering. The character we see on the coastline is just another victim to being lured to what they think is a better world, away from the dystopia, like the old tales of sailors being led to their deaths by an ancient siren.
You performed in May at the Prog Metal Mania festival this year. How was that? Will we have any more chances to see Ihlo live soon?
Prog Metal Mania was a fantastic experience for us! It was our first time going to Germany and everyone was incredibly helpful and welcoming. The festival itself had an amazing atmosphere and we got to see some incredible bands play after we finished stressing about our own performance. We got the chance to play with our new bassist Max Brayson for the first time (great job Max!) and also found out that you can order a van with Uber. The future is now! We only have one other show planned for this year; a very special album release show for Legacy, on September 20th in London! We’ll be playing through a lot of new material from the record, so we wanted to give everyone a chance to play through it a couple of times and get familiar. Everything after that is still quite vague, planning and booking shows is tough these days, but we’re hoping to play more shows and travel further than we ever have before.
Ihlo’s Legacy will be released on August 29th, 2025 through Kscope. Pre-order the album through your favorite music delivery method here.
Proglodytes 