When Blood Incantation released their blippity-boop space ambient EP Timewave Zero in 2022, I felt like the only person in the universe that went like: “Hell yeah, this is great!”
Metalheads around the world were confused by this electronic interlude in their otherwise techy brand of cavernous death metal. Frontman and brain of the operation Paul Riedl also spent a good part of 2023 releasing ambient music and it turns out that he’s quite talented at it, so it felt like the start of a transition era for the band. I suspected they would pull an Ulver on us and become another band entirely, but it’s not exactly what happens on their new record Absolute Elsewhere. Kinda, but not quite.
Don’t get me wrong, this is definitely an "after Timewave Zero" album, but it sounds more like what fans would’ve loved Opeth to evolve into than distant worlds Brian Eno. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised. I sure was.
Absolute Elsewhere offers forty-three minutes of music broken up in two chapters and six subchapters called “tablets”, which really are songs. Everything’s more complicated and symbolic than it needs to be when it comes to Blood Incantation, but it’s part of their charm. They have a blissful disregard for the simplest songwriting conventions that enables them to twist, turn and fold them and test their boundaries.
The first chapter on Absolute Elsewhere is called The Stargate. It opens under an absolute thunder of double bass drum and cavernous riff before breaking into a long keyboard bridge reminiscent of Timewave Zero. I love how the old school, 1970s organ and classic eighties rock guitar is incorporated. The timeline of influences is all scrambled between the past and the future, heightening the feeling of being adrift into space. About half of the song is instrumental and as far as death metal as you can imagine. It brought a new and exciting texture to Blood Incantation’s sound. They’re more than just another technical death metal band now.
Second tablet of The Stargate is all instrumental, draped in lucious keyboards, acoustic guitar, reverberating samples from classic science fiction movies (maybe Star Trek?) and even flute. There’s a pleasant sensation of weightlessness coursing through it. There’s a fun, dissonant death metal segment in the last forty seconds that once again creates that layered, unpredictable atmosphere of drifting through uncharted worlds. Once again a terrific and expansive drumming performance by Isaac Faulk, which broadens the spectrum of what you can do in metal. Not only is he technical and precise, but he has a creative vision of his own. That dude is GOOD.
Tablet III is an all-out progressive death metal song more in line with Blood Incantation’s 2019 full length record Hidden History of the Human Race. There’s prog quirks like spoken word, clean chants, cithar-like sounds and tribal drums that are new and exciting, but Tablet III has the riffy, muscular and expansive structure Paul Riedl has gotten us used to. The outro features some of the most tense and memorable guitar work on the record.
Before I get into the second half of Absolute Elsewhere called The Message, let me give Paul Riedl, Isaac Faulk, Jeff Barrett and Morris Kolontyrsky props for releasing such a strange, amorphous and conceptual record. Metal is a conformist subculture at heart and it takes courage to take a step back from their own technical mastery in order to devote themselves to a coherent creative vision. I’m not the biggest science fiction guy, but I enjoyed that Blood Incantation wanted me to feel something on Absolute Elsewhere and feel something I did. Every death metal musician can play to a certain extent, but not all of them can create more than just songs and Blood Incantation made it work here.
The first thing I was reminded of when listening to the first tablet of The Message was Gorguts. I mean, both bands are inextricably linked. Blood Incantation wouldn’t have existed as it does today without Gorguts releasing Obscura in 1998. There’s influence of Cynic in there too. The Message, Tablet 1 is a complex and multifaceted song though, with melodic guitar riffs intercut with tremolo picking and I believe the first occurrence of blast beats on the record? It’s the proggiest I’ve ever heard Blood Incantation being and they’re a proggy/techy band at heart. It has some of Paul Riedl’s grimiest riffs too.
Tablet II features jazz instrumentation, clean singing, beautiful harmonies and a long old school prog rock segment reminiscent of Opeth’s 2019’s record In Cauda Venenum. Paul Riedl’s riffing couldn’t be any more different than on the previous song, but it’s intricate and engrossing. If we’ve traveled through the cosmos on the first part of Absolute Elsewhere, we’re definitely visiting an advanced alien civilization here. This album is such an odyssey. You can both focus on the details or let go and enjoy.
The final tablet of Absolute Elsewhere is the star of the show. An eleven and a half minutes cosmic journey through an alien planet that features conventional death metal, new age chanting, keyboards, old school heavy metal riffing, another insanely versatile performance by Isaac Faulk and atmosphere for days. It is a microcosm of what the album has to offer. I love how it lingers on obsessive riffs and builds up synth leads behind to alter your perception and accentuate the interdimensional travel vibe of the song in the second half. It’s an absolute gem of a song and a declaration of intent for Blood Incantation.
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Progressive death metal has been carrying the ghost of Chuck Schuldiner like a ball-and-chain for almost twenty-five years now. He was an icon and a forefather of the genre, but going-where-Chuck-wasn’t given-the-time-to-go has been a taboo among conformist metalheads for so long, it’s good to have a record like Absolute Elsewhere to challenge that. It’s going to make some purists howl, but let them.
I’m not the biggest prog death guy in the world, but I loved the conceptual boldness and the adventurous nature of Blood Incantation’s new record. Maybe it lacks a little in the breakdowns and overwhelming anger department to be on my best of the year list, but it’s an album I plan to go back to. Pleasant surprise from a band I wasn't a die hard fan of previously.
If you like what Ben does and want to hear him talk about books and movies too, follow his site Dead End Follies on Instagram.
If you like what Ben does and want to hear him talk about books and movies too, follow his site Dead End Follies on Instagram.
