Blood Incantation Archives - NO CLEAN SINGING

BLOOD INCANTATION: LIVE AT THE BOULDER THEATER, OCTOBER 4, 2024

Oct 182024

(Denver-based NCS writer Gonzo had the good fortune of seeing Blood Incantation perform in Denver on the day of their newest album’s release, preceded by the solo set of Steve Roach, and he’s given us the following show review. We’re also grateful to Denver photographer Jacob Juno for allowing us to use his photos from the show throughout this article.)

Hype is a helluva drug.

And perhaps no band in modern metal is aware of that statement the way Denver’s Blood Incantation are. Their 2019 opus Hidden History of the Human Race was released to a cacophony of effusive praise from every dark corner of the internet, catapulting the band into interdimensional stardom.

Fast forward to 2024. The past five years have seen Blood Incantation’s career become anything but predictable. There are probably fewer words that haven’t been used to describe Timewave Zero than those that have, and the Luminescent Bridge single was a nice surprise that left many (myself included) wanting more.

It felt like a culmination of all of this, then, to have the band play a special one-night-only headlining set at the foot of the Rocky Mountains last week. And to properly commemorate the release of Absolute Elsewhere, they even brought along the king of ambient sound himself, Steve Roach, to open the proceedings.

What followed was a night nobody in the Boulder Theater would soon forget.

BLOOD INCANTATION – ABSOLUTE ELSEWHERE

Album Reviews 9 Responses »

Oct 072024

(Andy Synn dons his sceptic hat to see whether Absolute Elsewhere is everything people say it is… or perhaps something more)

Some have said – perhaps not unreasonably – that over the years I’ve had a tendency to treat Blood Incantation a little more harshly (or, at least, be a lot less effusive with my praise) than many other writers.

It’s not that I don’t like the band by any means – I’ve reviewed them positively a number of times, in fact, and have largely enjoyed it when I’ve caught their live show (even if I’ve never been as blown away by their “Morbid Angel on mescaline” vibes as a lot of others seem to be).

It’s just that the hype – “the next big thing“, “the future of the genre“, “a paradigm shift in Progressive Death Metal“, and so on – has always (in my opinion) seemed to outstrip the music, such that with every new release it’s felt more and more like the band are trying to play catch-up to everyone else’s expectations (and demands).

But, wouldn’t you know it, it’s when the band finally stopped trying so hard (and, make no mistake, Absolute Elsewhere is the sort of introverted, art-for-art’s sake, album they absolutely needed to make) that Blood Incantation finally, and fully, caught up with all the hype around them… and then some.

BLOOD INCANTATION: “HIDDEN HISTORY OF THE HUMAN RACE”

Album Reviews 2 Responses »

Nov 112019

(We present Andy Synn‘s review of the new album by Colorado-based Blood Incantation, which will be released on November 22nd by Dark Descent Records (NorthAm) and Century Media (Europe), and features artwork by Bruce Pennington.)

The rapid rise of Blood Incantation can, when all is said and done, be attributed to a combination of a few different factors.

First and foremost, of course, is that fact that the Colorado quartet are just a fantastic Death Metal band. No caveats, no equivocations.

They’ve got the technical talents, they’ve got the songwriting skills, and, perhaps more importantly, they’ve got just the right blend of sounds – proggy enough to keep themselves from being boxed in with the rest of the “old school” revivalists, but “classic” enough to appeal to the nostalgia-hounds – to reach a surprisingly wide audience, both young and old.

Then there’s the group’s blissfully baked, “I’m not saying it was aliens…”, aesthetic which, when combined with their impressive songcraft and easy meme-ability (the scraggly logo, the hesher-friendly merch designs, the far-out ’70s sci-fi artwork) has given rise to a near-perfect storm of viral fame and critical acclaim that’s seen the band go from “relative unknown” to “next big thing” in just a few short years.

And while there’s definitely a little bit of home-grown hero-worship going on with some of their more rabid (typically American) fans, the truth is that the band’s highly-anticipated second album makes a strong case for why you need to start believing the hype.

Well, most of it anyway… Continue reading »

MORBID ANGEL / IMMOLATION / NECROT / BLOOD INCANTATION — LIVE IN ATLANTA, MARCH 13, 2019

Concert Reviews 6 Responses »

Mar 182019

(The following review of the DECIBEL Magazine Tour‘s stop in Atlanta last week was written by Tør, a self-professed metalhead, data nerd, and ex-academic, who first appeared at our site with a post based on his Ph.D. dissertation on the spread of metal across national boundaries. All the wonderful photos in this review were also made by Tør.)

The night got off to a good start: I was able to dodge the dreaded Atlanta traffic relatively easily on my way to catch Morbid Angel, Immolation, Necrot, and Blood Incantation on the Decibel Magazine Tour 2019.

I arrived at The Masquerade just in time to witness a solid mid-week crowd greeting Denver’s Blood Incantation with a warm Southern welcome. The band have been praised as one of the most promising acts in modern death metal and it’s easy to see why: They masterfully sailed through a thirty-minute opening slot by taking the crowd on a journey of progressive and cerebral death metal complete with slow enchanted passages and downright hard-hitting choruses. The technical ability and overall performance on display were quite astounding and solidified their place as one of the most innovative newer death metal acts in my mind. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2016’s MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 9): MITHRAS, BLOOD INCANTATION, VOID OMNIA

MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2016 12 Responses »

Jan 122017

I know it’s damned late in the day for another post — probably past bed-time for some of our readers across the Atlantic — but I’ll be damned if I let another day go by without resuming the rollout of this Most Infectious Song series. This train must keep on rolling! (If you’d like to see the songs that preceded these three or learn what we mean by “most infectious”, go here.)

I continue to have fun picking combinations of songs for each installment. The three songs in this one are musically quite distinct, although all of them display phenomenal musicianship, but they do have a few things in common. Perhaps the most obvious one is a fascination with SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE….

MITHRAS

I assume I don’t need to provide much of an introduction to the new Mithras album, On Strange Loops. Nevertheless, I assume I’d have to pay some wretched price if I mentioned Mithras without quoting from my friend Andy Synn’s review, so here goes: Continue reading »

CALIFORNIA DEATHFEST 2016 (DAY THREE)

Concert Reviews No Responses »

Oct 182016

Monday morning, Oakland waterfront

This wraps up our coverage of the second installment of CALIFORNIA DEATHFEST, which took place from October 14-16, 2016, in Oakland, California. As was true of my posts on Day One and Day Two, I haven’t written fulsome reviews of the performances I saw on the final day, though this time I have included a few more impressions than in the earlier installments — but I’ve once again included photos and videos I made using my iPhone.

Yes, this is a half-assed way to document a festival compared to what you will probably see from a few of the more well-healed metal publications out there who employed professional photographers and videographers. However, because “Half-Assed” is in fact my middle name, I’m being true to myself. Continue reading »

ANDY SYNN PRESENTS: REVIEWS IN HAIKUS (MARE COGNITUM, BLOOD INCANTATION, MESARTHIM)

Album Reviews, Reviews In Haikus 8 Responses »

Sep 192016

(Andy Synn brings us a new installment in his series of album reviews in haiku. Three reviews of three lines each come after the jump. With music, of course.)

Despite what I’ve seen suggested by certain slightly ill-informed commenters recently, Metal’s obsession with space and the vast potential and possibilities of the great beyond is nothing new.

Let’s be honest for a second – a bunch of the genre’s progenitors were massive nerds who stole took inspiration from some of sci-fi’s biggest (and some not so big) names to feed their lyrics and concepts, and this basically laid the groundwork for everyone from Agalloch to Obscura to Wormed to draw their own inspirations from the same deep well, be it the pulpiest of science fiction or the hardest of science fact. Sometimes both.

So for the latest edition of this column I’ve selected three fantastic albums which, to date, haven’t been covered properly here on NCS, each of which firmly and confidently puts its own spin on the great interstellar enigma and our place as insignificant motes of fleeting life within the vast and unending void. Continue reading »

A WEDNESDAY ROUND-UP: DYSRHYTHMIA, INDRICOTHERE, BLOOD INCANTATION, PESTIFERE

Metal News 14 Responses »

Jun 222016

photo by Johnny DeBlase

We’ve posted so many “Seen and Heard” collections this week that I decided to give that heading a break, though that’s what this post really is: another collection of somewhat randomly observed news and new music that I thought was worth spreading around. And because we’ve posted so many of these collections recently, I decided to cut back the volume of this particular one, too — though I do think the selections I’ve made here make nice complements to each other.

DYSRHYTHMIA

Guitarist Kevin Hufnagel and bassist Colin Marston could be resting on their laurels after their standout work on the new Gorguts EP, Pleiades’ Dust (not to mention Marston’s performances on the new releases by Withered, Krallice, and his own Indricothere project) , but instead they and drummer Jeff Eber are bringing out a new Dysrhythmia album. Entitled The Veil of Control, it’s the band’s seventh studio full-length and their first since 2012’s Test of Submission. According to today’s announcement by Profound Lore, it will be released on September 23. Continue reading »