Absolute Elsewhere feels like the cosmic leap into the unknown that Denver quartet Blood Incantation have been teetering on the edge of for the last couple of years. Whilst some were disappointed that 2022’s Timewave Zero was a fully fledged ambient record rather than a fusion with their usual death metal maelstrom, last year’s standalone ‘Luminescent Bridge’ single proved these two aspects of the band’s sonic identity could co-inhabit harmoniously after all.
If ‘Luminescent Bridge’ felt like the band plotting out a star map, then Absolute Elsewhere is the rocket ship that will finally propel them deep into the cosmos. Boasting a similarly rich, luscious and organic sound (this time captured at Berlin’s legendary Hansa Studios), the album finds Blood Incantation returning to their death metal roots with renewed psychedelic vigour, eager to tear apart familiar metallic ideas and reshape them into vibrant new forms.
The two lengthy pieces that make up Absolute Elsewhere are so detailed and keenly crafted, that it almost seems a disservice to give away their surprises here. That first time you hear the opening of ‘The Stargate’ is a seriously wild ride: the riffing of Human-era Death breaking into a spacious dub workout, only to venture through rich Berlin school electronics (complete with a guest appearance from Tangerine Dream’s Thorsten Quaeschning, bringing the band’s ambient fascination full circle) before arriving at one of the band’s most ominously doomy crescendos. ‘The Message’ is even more disarming, as sumptuous, shoegazey chords (accentuated by Jeff Barrett’s nimble, jazz-fusion basslines) erupt into yearning, vortex-like Morbid Angel-isms and blissful Pink Floyd worshipping soundscapes.
There’s a tendency amongst forward-thinking extreme metal bands to fetishize ‘70s prog rock aesthetics to such a degree they become more regressive instead. Mastodon or Opeth, for example, arguably sounded more authentically progressive in their earlier incarnations than they did after going self-consciously ‘prog’ in later years, seemingly more interested in ticking boxes than pushing boundaries. Despite Blood Incantation’s wholehearted embrace of classic prog excess however, that’s not what’s happening here. It’s telling that, in a recent interview with tQ, drummer Isaac Faulk was keen to acknowledge that “…extreme metal… was the music that was pushing in a bunch of different directions”.
For all the proggy flights of fancy here, Absolute Elsewhere still resolutely retains what made the band’s unique take on death metal so fascinating in the first place. Once the novelty of hearing them bust out Rick Wakeman-esque synth flourishes amidst churning blastbeats has worn off, repeated listens reveal the band’s songwriting skills feeling more finely honed than ever, with a consistent (if entirely surreal) logic underpinning the structure of both these side-long movements. Rather than simply vaulting between a death metal riff, a prog bit, a space ambient section and so on and so forth, all these different elements complement each other perfectly and weave together to form an impressively cohesive whole, gradually coming together like a magic eye puzzle to form easily the most ambitious death metal record of the year.
