The Black Space, Our Only Almighty
Blood Incantation is yet another band
in my listener's career which discography I met inconsecutively. The
first sounds of these Denver based madmen stroke my senses under the
„Starspawn” name and demolished me completely. Well, it was just
a coincidence, I wanted to buy their stuff and the debut landed on my
desk firstly. So it was pretty sure for me that this reviewed Ep,
somberly called „Interdimensional Extinction”, would be the title
for my collection eventually. Of course, if I hadn't had opportunity
to meet their 2016 debut, I would have gotten my attention to it, no
two ways about it. Why? Because no one can miss its front cover, the
Bruce Pennington artwork from 1973, a true eyesnare. It is absolutely
stunning: by using only two basic colors, he managed to depict the
most ominous thing for every human being – the Black Space, where
we are but just nothing...
Before writing about the musical
content, it's worth to glance at the logo as well, a proper thing for
depressive black or any goregrind slamming crew. But no, not a bit of
it, Blood Incantation is just pure death metal act. And what's more,
the band seems to be one of the brightest stars on the metal
firmament. Their merely eighteen minutes first serious title is a
cosmic journey: fascinating yet frightening to the bone, with no
signs of accidentality (sometimes rather as controlled chaos). As for
production side, the sounds are fresh and organic despite completely
digital form, it supports the music which has been given in awesome
shape. Fore sure, killing fretless bass parts played by Damon Good as
a session musician are really worth checking out closely! And if I
had to play in musical comparisons or parallels, I would enumerate
debut album of Demilich on the first place I guess, maybe with a bit
of Nocturnus from „The Key” era, however without that huge amount
of Louis Panzer works. These mentioned bands are one thing, but in my
opinion the Americans play in the same masterful league like Mexicans
from worshipped The Chasm. However their deathly visions are
different, but with the final impressions to be pretty much similar.
The whole is really varied, where many
fine ideas have got its right place. There is even a room for clean
vocals and Moog section. And despite drowning in technical display,
being broken and turbulent, this Ep is very easy to swallow in full.
Then the cosmic energy (as the booklet precisely says: cosmic echoes
to the underground) enslaves the flesh and the soul. Seemingly Blood
Incantation doesn't try to be the fastest band in the universe and
rather mid tempo prevail, yet some outbreaks of rampant speed are
present as well. With old-schoolish-driven crushing riffs, quite
melodius leads, acoustic parts in „Obfuscating the Linear
Threshold”, atmospheric opening in „Hovering Lifeless” or
horror-like ending in the last one, the puzzle becomes to be just
another great title on my shelf. And after many meetings with it,
still I cannot write which track is the best one. It proves the stuff
is quality equal, since the very first seconds to the end of
„Subterranean Aeon” - my senses ride through the galaxies, black
holes, stargates, beyond the light, beyond human life form, beyond
the known universe... with only the Black Space as a comate. But this
is not the end of the endless journey, as „Starspawn” is going to
visit the Tulum Codex pages very, very soon...
93/100
-Tlacaxipehualiztli
(written in November, 2019)
