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Ignescent: Fight In Me
Ignescent - Fight In Me Album Art

Ignescent: Fight In Me

Alternative Rock/Metalcore (FFV)
3.0/5.0

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Frontiers Music
Words: Craig Hartranft
Added: 07.11.2023 | Released: 10.11.2023

Arriving from Elgin, a few miles north and west of Chicago, is Ignescent a female-fronted band founded in 2008 by principal songwriter and vocalist Jennifer Benson. To date Ignescent has dropped several recordings, the EPs Electrified (2011, produced by four time Dove Award winning & Grammy nominated producer Travis Wyrick (10 Years, P.O.D.)) and Ascension (2022), then the single Resist, also 2022.

Ignescent - Click For Larger Image

Ignescent's Jennifer Benson

Ignescent has toured excusively in the Midwest appearing with bands such as Korn, Anthrax, Stryper, Flyleaf, Memphis May Fire, The Devil Wear Prada, and TobyMac and many more. Also, their music has appeared on Christian Billboard Rock Charts. Based on this success, Benson and Ignescent have found a home with Italy's Frontiers Music for their first full-length studio album, Fight In Me.


Primarily, as you can deduce from my first sentence, Ignescent is a platform for Ms Benson's lyrics and voice. Musically, these are performed in the context of alternative rock and metal, perhaps a significant metalcore influence, perhaps some pop/dance nuances. Benson cites influence from Flyleaf, Evanescence, Jinjer and Paramore. Largely, Ignescent's music consists of harsh riffage, bombastic blast beats and polyrhythms, quirky and splashy synth samplings, wrapped in some self-evident d-tuning. An exceptional singer, it's Benson's voice that adds the melody and harmony (except when she goes metalcore as within Under Attack). Monster You Made is a definitive and derivitive example genre mash-up.

In other words, Ignescent's sound is consistent (or repetitive, depending on your perspective) with what passes for most female-fronted alternative rock metal core. Though not listening to much of the same these days, I found nothing novel or original that sets Ignescent apart from the Jingers et al of the day. Nevertheless, I still found some songs of interest: the ballad You're Not Alone, the catchy (for some strange reason) Unholy, and the duet with Keven Young, Not Today, perhaps because it had some subtle AOR accessibility in the alt metal context.

All said, Ignescent's Fight In Me, featuring founder, songwriter, and vocalist Jennifer Benson, is a consistently predictable album of, what can now be called, after 30+ years, "traditional" alternative rock/metalcore. Check out the tunes. Support the band.


Addendum: What follows next is more commentary (and honesty), then review, on the nature of Ignescent's "faith-based" music.

Ignescent also has a connection to the world of Christian rock (as mentioned above) with collaboration previously with Ben Kasica (Skillet), among others, and currently with Kevin Young of Disciple on the aforementioned album single Not Today. This association has led many observers to consider Ignescent a "faith-based" or "Christian" band. Which references a perputual problem that continues from the post-Christian rock days of the Eighties.

Generally, in this era, a "Christian" band (or a band where some or all claim to be Christians) does not want to be identified as a "Christian" band so as not to diminish their secular reach and possible potential for commercial success. Even since the days of Stryper, this has been a conundrum, a thorn in the flesh, for "Christian" bands.

Additionally, this adds another problem: faith-based doesn't necessarly mean Gospel-based or Christ-centered. Largely, there's never a specific mention of Jesus Christ in a song (as that would be too offensive), only veiled metaphorical hints. To whom or what is faith based upon when there is not direct reference to Jesus Christ or the Holy Trinity. Assumption or supposition?

So it is with Ingnescent. Knowing that the band is faith-based, or better Christ/Gospel-based, is largely supposition, then only to be discovered ex post facto from the artist, or somehow deduced (but with what context) from the lyrics, hopefully.


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The Take Away

Ignescent's Fight In Me, featuring founder, songwriter, and vocalist Jennifer Benson, is a consistently predictable album of, what can now be called, after 30+ years, "traditional" alternative rock/metalcore. Check out the tunes. Support the band

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