Album review: Blood Incantation – Absolute Elsewhere

It’s been brilliant watching the widening of Blood Incantation’s cosmic horizons. Five years on since 2019’s Hidden Histories Of The Human Race properly announced them to the world, with its sci-fi alien artwork, far out themes and progressive bent that took peered into the beyond without properly blasting off away from the death metal launchpad (which they would do on 2022’s entirely ambient Timewave Zero), on Absolute Elsewhere they sound like they’re being beamed from space.

It’s essentially a 1970s prog album with death metal bits, divided into two sides (The Stargate and The Message), consisting of multi-part ‘Tablets’ that flow together as gigantic pieces. There are moments that do spooky, cunning, Morbid Angel-styled death metal better than Morbid Angel over the past decade, and there are bits, such as the second movement of Tablet II, that could have been written by Pink Floyd at their most cosmic.

There’s synths everywhere, not added in as a novel afterthought, but treated with the seriousness of the guitars and blasts, by people who really know what they’re up to. But, if you want a real expert hand, Thorsten Quaeschning from German synth explorers Tangerine Dream pops up to add a touch of space dust. Want some proggy flute? They’ve got that, too.

The greatest achievement is how easy to swallow this all is. The shifts between chonky riffs and mellower, jazzy polyrhythms and gorgeous David Gilmour-ish guitar solos are so smooth as to be in some way unnoticeable as they happen. It speaks highly of Blood Incantation’s skill at this game that it all slots together as easily as a well-oiled jigsaw.

Death metal has often looked to the stars for inspiration. Rarely have they peered at the beyond quite so intently and with so much wonder as Blood Incantation. When it comes to actually going on a voyage there, they are on a solo journey at this point. Take your protein pills and put your helmet on, Absolute Elsewhere is going to take you to the outer limits.

Verdict: 4/5

For fans of: Morbid Angel, Hans Zimmer, Pink Floyd

Absolute Everywhere is out now via Century Media