Blood Incantation
Absolute Elsewhere
**** out of *****
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The Denver, CO based Blood Incantation have cracked open their personal sonic delights on their newest offering Absolute Elsewhere. Combining fierce death metal slamming with psychedelic prog-rock flights of fancy, the group explores the far reaches of their inspirations.
Split up into two long tracks (side A and B if you are on the vinyl) the band, Paul Riedl, Isaac Faulk, Morris Kolontyrsky, and Jeff Barrett work to combine mind altering cosmic journeys. Have you ever wondered what it would sound like if Pink Floyd combined with Morbid Angel to record an album? Look no further.
The first part of "The Stargate" or Tablet 1 as the band calls it shows the way forward for Blood Incantation. It starts by building ominously with looming riffs, and hard percussion all colored with guttural vocal belches, before shifting at the two minute mark to wandering peaceful space rock. It slowly builds into Floydian sounds only to kick back into death metal growling and guitar screeching.
"Tablet II" stays on the prog side of things wandering through the unknown before an acoustic guitar strum starts building the tension as more guitars bleed together exploding into "Tablet III" which pummels with double kick drums to start before radically shifting to eastern and acoustic instrumentation with amazing hand drum work. The metal returns climbing to a swirling finale that fades out.
With wild changes like these there can be a whiplash effect and while sometimes the album is disorientating the band works hard to fuse these styles so the tracks don't fell like three songs stitched together.
"The Message" uses three more "Tablets" playing out in the same fashion as "The Stargate", if even more flushed out. "Tablet I" has twinkling guitars and bass runs around heavy as hell drumming, shifting back and forth between exploratory and assaulting, delivering a gorgeous David Gilmour inspired guitar solo before chugging riffs and hammering drums marching to a conclusion.
"II" is a hard instrumental to start before going full Pink Floyd mode with normally sung, ghostly vocals mid song. One aspect of death metal is the screamed lyrics and while the band seems to be slightly softening on that, the lyrical content remains aloof along with any sort of wider appeal.
The finale of "The Message Tablet III" goes for it all, stretching out almost twelve minutes with more natural sounding instrumentals, synths, psychedelic solos and layers of grunting and pummeling drums. Absolute Elsewhere fades out around synths and thunder storm, easing the listener back to the wet planet Earth.
The band delivers on their description of "progressive death metal" and if you are a fan of those two genres this album will be heaven. Even if you are not though, Blood Incantation's adventurous spirit is alive and well with heavy music and space laden wanderings, leading to a very creative final result on Absolute Elsewhere.
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