Idle Hands: Metal vets venture to Norway in search of their next act

April 7, 2025

Nick Spacek,

Photo by Spencer Chapin

Idle Heirs, the new project from Coalesce frontman Sean Ingram and producer Josh Barber , was not originally intended for your ears. Lucky for you, however, their album, Life is Violence, will be released by metal label Relapse Records on Friday, April 11, with the act performing live in an album release show at Warehouse on Broadway with Norma Jean that same night.

When we last spoke with Ingram, he had just sold Blue Collar Press, a screen printing company he had founded and ran for two decades, to Seen Merch—a process the metal vocalist refers to as “going out into the wilderness.”

“This is a dark time, when your whole life has been wrapped up in a business and taking care of other people and you realize that, for your own mental health and physical well-being that, maybe you need to exit,” Ingram reflects on the events of 2023. “I just got into a spot that was uncomfortable.”

It wasn’t until Ingram’s wife, Chela, nudged him to continue making music that Ingram picked up where he had left. She’d (rightfully) pointed out that he was never happier than when he was spending time performing with a band.

“At the end of the day, the whole point of this is to be creative and to have a creative outlet and to just lean into yourself, and definitely get into your discomfort zone,” Ingram explains of both the idea behind Idle Heirs and making music as a whole.

“Really, this whole idea was that this was just for us,” Ingram says. “We felt like the audience would be my kids or my close friends and that was it.”

It wasn’t until Relapse Records heard the recordings for Life is Violence and showed an immense amount of enthusiasm about it that Ingram and Barber softened on their original vision of the album just being something that popped up on Bandcamp for friends and family.

Photo by Spencer Chapin

The process was something different for Ingram and Barber both. Barber, as a producer, has worked with Tech N9ne, Norma Jean, The Devil Wears Prada, and more, but hasn’t made his own music in ages. After Barber started composing the instrumental tracks, Ingram dove in on lyrics and vocal arrangements.

Ingram says that as a vocalist, he always wants to do something he’s never done before. “That was the freedom to put myself out on a limb. But keep in mind, I really put myself out there and I’m super exposed. A lot of this stuff, it’s a little difficult now that we’re in this part of the thing where people are listening to it and assigning their own opinions towards it and picking it apart. because I had none of that in mind.”

Ingram says he had complete freedom, with no judgment, to just go for it. The first song Barber sent to Ingram to explain where the producer was at would become “Momma”—the final track on Life is Violence. For those expecting Coalesce version 2.0, or similar to guest spots Ingram has done for artists like Bummer or The Used, it will be an eye-opener. It’s vulnerable, quiet, and emotionally devastating in a way that’s equally as brutal as things both Ingram and Barber have worked on in the past.

Photo Courtesy of Idle Heirs

Idle Heirs’s album as a whole can be seen that way, as well. Life is Violence opens with “Loose Tooth,” which contains the lyric, “No stranger to silence/No love of my own voice,” quietly declaring at the outset that this will be a raw album, open both emotionally and musically.

“I just love the idea of being like, ‘Hey, we’re just going to get this singing thing out of the way so that we can–,’” Ingram pauses and clarifies. “To me, it’s almost like, ‘Let’s get caught up.’”

After you get caught up to Ingram, with the singing thing out of the way, it’s immediately contrasted with one of the longest and heaviest—yet more controlled—screams Ingram has ever done on tape, right out of the gate. Pairing that characteristic roar with riffs as one might expect, while spending equal time exploring open musical expanses and quietly introspective singing is a study in contrast.

Interestingly enough, this new vocal approach all came about not because Ingram wanted to get better at actual singing, but so that he could get his voice back in shape for the screams.

Photo Courtesy of Idle Heirs

“I did a bit part for the last Bummer record and I think that was when I was like, ‘I don’t fucking remember how to do this anymore at all,’” recalls Ingram, with it taking almost a solid year and a half of vocal training through coaches, DVDs, and YouTube videos to get his voice back. “It was an incredible amount of physical work to get my diaphragm back into shape because I just didn’t use that part of my body for 15 years, and once that came back into place, then I was able to just get back into it as far as the singing part of it.”

Life is Violence may not have originally been created for mass consumption, but that doesn’t mean this was recorded by Barber and Ingram in a garage—The pair went all the way to Norway’s Ocean Sound studio to create the record.

“Josh had called up and he said, ‘We may never record anything ever again in our life,’” Ingram says. “‘How do you feel about Norway?’”

The pair ran the numbers, got their credit cards out, and decamped to Giske, a town on an island with a recording studio.

“It’s just secluded,” Ingram says. “The North Sea’s right there. There’s really nothing anywhere around. You gotta kind of go through tunnels to find civilization. The Northern Lights are overhead every night. We’ve created this bubble, nobody is allowed in or out, and we’re gonna make this thing.’”