BLOOD INCANTATION – Absolute Elsewhere

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• Bands:
  BLOOD INCANTATION
• Duration: 00:43:43
• Available from: 04/10/2024
• Label:

• Century Media Records

Streaming not yet available

Blood Incantation have long been a particularly ambitious group, willing to go beyond the boundaries of their original genre to explore other sounds dear to its members, in search of a sound that is as personal as possible or at least far from hackneyed plots.
The great success of “Hidden History Of The Human Race” could easily have opened up a series of works in the same vein, but the Americans instead preferred to surprise everyone with an all-encompassing experiment like the ambient interlude “Timewave Zero”, attracting quite a few criticisms and ending up on the so-called 'black list' of the most extremist listeners.
After a couple of years of waiting, during which the boys also found a way to carry on the careers of other bands such as Spectral Voice and Wayfarer, now comes the important appointment with the third full-length: a work recorded in very famous Hansa Studios in Berlin (Depeche Mode, U2, Killing Joke), with which the quartet tries to confirm once again its changing character and its ability to delve into new musical currents, while maintaining its own underlying coherence.
Unlike the aforementioned “Timewave Zero”, in which the metal component was completely absent, this new work brings the band back to the coordinates with which it established itself in the beginning, but does so with a renewed direction and vision.
The structure is indeed ambitious: two songs of about twenty minutes each that blend the classic Nineties death metal dear to the group with ambient, prog rock (Camel, Genesis) and psychedelic explorations, giving life to a compelling synthesis between past and present.
In short, it can be said that with “Absolute Elsewhere” the Americans are going to recover some of the vigor of their original sound, without giving up the atmospheric ideas that characterized the aforementioned much-talked-about experiment of 2022, and in the same way it is no coincidence that the work takes the baton from the recent EP “Luminescent Bridge”, which had hinted at this new path for the quartet.
In the album, the exploratory soul is certainly present and cohesive – further underlined in some passages by the appearance of clean voices – but the foundations of the compositions remain rooted in metal, with all the typical elements of Blood Incantation: sharp riffs, clear references to Morbid Angel, technically demanding sections and a complex but at the same time fluid and harmonious structure.
All in all, even in this circumstance it cannot be said that the Americans invent something completely new: more than reckless innovators in a progressive key, the boys are fine and intelligent assemblers, always skilled in fusing various influences and scores – whose true origins they are clearly elsewhere – in inspired compositions, which rarely tire the ear. It is no coincidence that this time too the group demonstrates a great ability to manage long pieces, avoiding obvious repetitions or forced passages.
The tracks flow with a certain naturalness, confirming that songwriting ability that had already shone in a monumental episode like “Awakening from the Dream of Existence to the Multidimensional Nature of Our Reality (Mirror of the Soul)” on “Hidden History of the Human Race”. Even in “Absolute Elsewhere” you can feel that same fluidity, but with an extra touch of melody – see the very catchy incipit of “The Message” – and atmospheric refinement, a sign that the band is successfully integrating the new sonic directions explored in recent times.
One of the most fascinating aspects of the album is in fact the contribution of the guests, who enrich the sound fabric with expertly measured interventions. Thorsten Quaeschning of Tangerine Dream and Nicklas Malmqvist of Hällas, with their synths and mellotron, add depth to the dreamiest arias, accentuating the transitions between the aggressive sections and the more ethereal ones and helping to make the development of the songs always compelling. This fusion of apparently distant musical worlds therefore finds its notable harmony here, in a continuous game of contrast and fusion that makes listening particularly engaging, recalling in its feeling and setting pearls such as “Crimson” by Edge Of Sanity or “Colors ” by Between The Buried And Me.
In this context, the balance between the old death metal verve and the forays into 'external' territories therefore becomes the key to understanding the evolution and design of the band, which here manages to integrate the various elements in a more cohesive way and organic, returning its typical sound system, the death metal one, with the addition of new influences that amplify its breath.
A tracklist made up of just two such long episodes might be scary at first, but on “Absolute Elsewhere” the great harmony of the solutions and the care with which everything was orchestrated wins.
Faced with this broad and inclusive musical vision, one never has the idea of ​​being in the presence of something too difficult or pretentious: such musicality, starting from foundations that are anything but easy listening, is a rare commodity and Blood Incantation know how to express it at its best. This is a record that confirms them among the most interesting realities of the metal scene of the last decade.