[ATTENDED: November 25, 2024] Blood Incantation
My brother-in-law Ben told me about Blood Incantation a couple of weeks before this show. So I grabbed a ticket just before it sold out!
With a name (and logo) like that, I assumed they were just a bludgeoning death metal band but they display all kinds of interesting progressive rock tendencies. And those are fully explored on their newest album Absolute Elsewhere.
The album is 43 minutes long and consists of two songs. Each song has three parts. And they played the album in full for this show.
When I walked in I saw that there were an obelisk on either side of the stage. It had characters carved into it and just before the band took the stage the characters lit up red.
When the band came out I couldn’t get over how the lead singer looked. Paul Riedl has a mustache and long hair (balding on top) he looked like a manager at Staples. But then he stepped up to the mic and went “OOH” and the growl was perfect.
Knowing that the album was a bit more trippy (with lots of synths and quiet parts) I wasn’t sure how moshy the crowd would be. But as soon as the band started, and the opening bludgeoning began, I quickly had to move several feet to the right.
The song starts out with some pounding guitars and Isaac Faulk using all of his drum kit. And after a squealing guitar and a bug grunted Oooh, the band took off with some seriously fast double bass drums and wild guitar soloing.
After 2 minutes of furiousness, the song slowed down dramatically with picked guitars and quiet washes of synths. Three minutes later it’s back to the heaviness with some growled lyrics and wild soloing from Morris Kolontyrsky.
Jeff Barrett played bass and while I couldn’t seem him from where I was, his low end was felt from the speakers.
After 8 minutes, the song segued into Tablet II.
On the album, Tablet II has a co-credit with Tangerine Dream. And this excerpt that I found online says
Thorsten Quaeschning, leader of Tangerine Dream since founder Edgar Froese’s death in 2015, stopped by to see what was up. “He’s extremely stoic, a very German guy!” laughs Paul. “He was sitting there just listening, and I dared not look to see if he was interested or not. Everyone just sat kinda awkwardly for 44 minutes. When he left, we didn’t know if he liked it or hated it!” Happily, a while later they received an invite to Thorsten’s studio. “He played what he’d done for us and it straight up sounded like [classic 1974 Tangerine Dream record] Phaedra! And then he turned around from the console and was like, ‘Oh, I hope you don’t mind, I used the Phaedra Mellotron.’ It was physically sampled from Edgar Froese’s actual Mellotron, and that’s why it sounds so crazy!”
Keyboards were handled by Nicklas Malmqvist of Swedish prog band Hällas. I couldn’t see him at all because of the obelisk. And so, this death metal band has 3 minutes of Tangerine Dream music floating through this epic. Then guitars are added and the song builds until it explodes with chords like Voivod and more screaming guitars.
Tablet III returns to a more noisy riffing section–all kinds of time signatures and wild drumming. It features massive double bass drums during slower guitar parts and then slows down dramatically for a spoken word section. The song runs through some catchy soloing and intensity before it slowly fades away.
Then Riedl, who has such a great growly voice, spoke to us, in a quiet and polite voice hoping we’ve been enjoying everything so far. He told us that they’d be playing the next song on the album.
Fast and jazzy for about a minute until all hell breaks loose, with everything at hyperspeed and Reidl’s growls leading the way. $5 seconds later we’re back to quieter propulsive guitar picking, a lovely solo and more spoken word (which was hard to hear). I really enjoyed the way off kilter four note sequence that ran through the middle of the song–Reidl and Kolontyrsky played it simultaneously. Tablet I sped to its conclusion
And then Tablet II was all quiet synth and jazzy bass, with totally prog guitar notes throughout. The big surprise always comes when the growled vocals interrupt the pretty guitars. But this section had an even bigger surprise because Riedl actually sang in a delicate voice. I’ve seen this referred to as the Pink Floyd section because it sounds a lot like Animals, but I also hear Blue Oyster Cult in Reidl’s voice.
The slow part builds inevitably to Tablet III’s intense heaviness. But even this part has some surprises–flutelike sounds in the quieter sections and more singing from Reidl. The end of the track and the album features a soaring guitar riff that tears the roof off. And, like any good space epic, the set ended with keys slowly fading and thunder rumbling as the crowd went berserk for such an amazing set.
The album is 45 minutes, so the band had a little more to place, and Reidl introduced “Inner Paths (to Outer Space)” from Hidden History of the Human Race. It opened with that same outer space vibe of washes of sound. It evolves into a classic heavy metal song with great guitar riffs, fast guitars and a few growls (the song is otherwise an instrumental).
The band left for an encore, but Nicklas Malmqvist stayed on stage and played some cool trippy keyboard sounds, absolutely filling the room with a space vibe. After a couple minutes of this, Isaac Faulk came back out and started smashing the hell out of a giant gong (and I love a gong). It was a great encore break.
And then the rest of the band came out and they played “Obliquity of the Ecliptic” a nine minute epic from the EP that came out before the new album.
It was an intense hour and change. The crowd was really into it (and the raves after the show were excessive). It seemed like the band might be hanging around after the show, but I was happy to just get home after an intense metal show.
I don’t really see myself going to too many more metal shows as I don’t really like the mosh scene, so this was a great one to possibly end on.
SETLIST
- The Stargate [Tablet I] √
- The Stargate [Tablet II] √
- The Stargate [Tablet III] √
- The Message [Tablet I] √
- The Message [Tablet II] √
- The Message [Tablet III] √
- Inner Paths (to Outer Space) ⊗
encore - Obliquity of the Ecliptic £
√ Absolute Elsewhere (2024)
£ Luminescent Bridge EP (2023)
⊗ Hidden History of the Human Race (2019)
I Just Read About That... 
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