From a distance, Blood Incantation’s work can seem forbidding.The Denver death metal experimentalists have spent the past decade fleshing out a universe that encompasses not only their frequently challenging music, but also a codex of hallucinogenic imagery that can seem inscrutable at first glance.
That iconography permeates their album artwork and ephemera as well as their lyrics; fully appreciating Blood Incantation, for better or worse, has always meant trying to figure out what’s up with all the aliens, pyramids, and obelisks.If a reliably entertaining, easy-to-parse death metal band like Cannibal Corpse is Star Wars, then Blood Incantation is the final 20 minutes of 2001: A Space Odyssey.
They even have their own star child.Despite their penchant for esoterica, Blood Incantation have managed to attract a wide, varied audience.
Their first full-length, 2016’s Starspawn, was an initial breakthrough, building on the groundwork of their early demos and the Interdimensional Extinction EP, and signaling at their grander, proggier ambitions.But it was 2019’s Hidden History Of The Human Race that blew the doors wide open.
Despite making few gestures toward accessibility – its signature song might be the 18-minute psych-death epic “Awakening From The Dream Of Existence To The Multidimensional Nature Of Our Reality (Mirror Of The Soul)” – Hidden History became one of the most broadly acclaimed metal records of the 2010s.I’ve seen T-shirts bearing Bruce Pennington’s iconic album cover (gray alien, pale blue sky, mysterious floating objects) at more than one indie rock show.
“A lot of people would say, ‘I don’t even listen to any metal at all, but this record somehow does it for me,’ which I found amazing,” says guitarist Morris Kolontyrsky.While preparing to unveil their third proper LP — the dizzyingly expansive Absolute Elsewhere, out today — they took a stance of radical openness with their growing fanbase.
The announcem...