Weekly Update #28 – October 6, 2024

FEATURED ALBUM
Blood Incantation // Absolute Elsewhere
Released: October 4, 2024

I’m a little out of my depth here, but this album is so cool that I want to share some thoughts, even if they have already been better articulated elsewhere.

I first heard Blood Incantation when their 2019 album started to gain some steam. Old school death metal and aliens, what a fun combo. But then they released an ambient album in 2022 with no vocals and I thought they had lost the plot. It was fine as a toned down version of the Interstellar sound track but a far cry from what fans had come to expect.

So who could have guessed that Blood Incantation would return in 2024 with the best album of their careers. ‘Absolute Elsewhere’ is a cosmic journey into the outer reaches of our universe.

It capitalizes on moments of experimentation that we’ve seen in the past and fully embraces those progressive impulses, using them as thrusters to launch this album into the heavens.

Musically, this album is insanely cohesive. It flows beautifully between old school death metal and flourishing progressive passages. It’s effortless to listen to despite the radical stylistic differences, bursts of energy, and accompanying moments of reprieve. It’s like watching a tesseract unfold. You’re aware that something special is happening, but you don’t fully understand what you’re witnessing. Nevertheless, it’s a joy to see and you feel like you caught a glimpse of the universe’s secrets. A good example is the start of “The Message [Tablet I].”

The progressive influences are reminiscent of those from the 70’s. I’m not super familiar with Pink Floyd or the other bands from that time, but the second half of “The Message [Tablet II]” is what I imagine when I think of them. And then, like getting woken from a cryogenic sleep after drifting through space, “The Message [Tablet III]” jolts the listener back to life with some fast paced death metal.

It feels appropriate to talk about “vibes” with this album. I feel like the 70’s would like that. Well, the vibes are immaculate. With an old school death metal foundation, progressive influences from decades past, and songs about aliens, outer space, death, and our purpose in life, ‘Absolute Elsewhere’ is the question and the answer.

If you told me that Blood Incantation wrote this album in between games of Dungeons and Dragons in a sunken living room styled by Austin Powers, I’d believe you. The vision and execution of this album could only be done by a band that truly loves this stuff.

‘Absolute Elsewhere’ will be hard to top. We’ve seen Blood Incantation experiment with an ambient album so who knows what they’ll try next. The one word of caution that I would offer the band: they should continue to take a measured approach with the progressive elements. I would hate for them to lean too far in and get lost in the sauce like Rivers of Nihil did on ‘The Work.’

Playlist of New Songs

Quick playlist highlights

– Like Moths To Flames released a new single as the final track of their last album, ‘The Cycles of Trying To Cope.’ The band stated, “Some of you might’ve heard the song as it is the hidden track on the record,” but I’m not sure how people could have accessed it. Maybe it was just on certain vinyl variants? Either way, this is already one of my favorite songs from the album. LMTF does not miss.

– In Dying Arms just released a new album. I can’t believe how few listeners they have on Spotify. They were one of the first deathcore bands to experiment with clean singing in 2011 and they have a special place in my heart. They’ve been slowly putting out singles over the last few years – I hope they return in full force.

– Aviana is literally being kept alive by Joel Holmquist’s rage. Joel was recruited into the band after Marcus Vik left to join Invent Animate. Pretty quickly after that, every member of Aviana quit, leaving Joel on his own. I thought Aviana was done for, but Joel refused to give up. He recruited new members and is single-handedly forging a path to success. In fact, Aviana has 243k listeners on Spotify and Invent Animate has 262k. That is actually insane. The hardstyle influences at 0:37 are a cool addition too.

– Allt just put out a new album and it’s impressive. I need to give it another full listen, but their vocalist has improved so much over the last year or two. I expect to see more conversations about these guys as people start to catch on. This style could see them touring with bands like August Burns Red that appeal to a more serious, mature type of metalcore crowd.

– The Browning just released their fifth single. The album comes out on November 8 and is going to contain 10 tracks. I feel like they’ll probably release another single a few days before the album, so there will only be four new songs? I don’t know man, I don’t love this current era where bands release 50% or more of the album as singles.

– Knosis is Ryo Kinoshita’s (ex-vocalist of Crystal Lake) new band. I’ve been into the songs so far – it’s kind of like a continuation of Crystal Lake.

– Downpour is a small melodic hardcore band from the UK that I’ve featured before. I wanted to give them a shout out this time because I like what they’ve been doing.

– This Mental Cruelty track is nuts. Super heavy and symphonic. The only problem is that Lorna Shore basically owns this style of music. It’s kind of a shame because other bands that try to iterate upon it will end up getting written off as copycats. Which yeah, I’m kind of over the Lorna Shore sound right now, but Mental Cruelty is a solid act that should get more recognition.

DRAMA – Angelmaker’s New Vocalist

Angelmaker just announced that Ian Bearer, the ex-vocalist from Rings of Saturn, will be joining the band full time and replacing Mike Greenwood as one of the band’s vocalists.

Angelmaker has always been unique due to the fact that they have two screaming vocalists. Mike Greenwood and Casey Tyson-Pearce were co-vocalists in the band since 2011 so this is a huge change. It’s unclear why Mike is being replaced, but some rumors on Reddit suggest that he might have been causing unnecessary stress.

I’m actually pretty pumped about this change. Ian Bearer is an insanely talented deathcore vocalist, and I can’t believe it took this long for him to get picked up by a band. In case you’re out of the loop, Ian was kicked out of Rings of Saturn because Lucas Mann is a dumbass. (Basically, Lucas got Rings of Saturn kicked off Nuclear Blast Records and then decided to turn Rings of Saturn into an instrumental band so he didn’t need Ian anymore).

But everyone knows that Ian took Rings of Saturn to new heights and was one of most impressive deathcore vocalists back in the 2010s when him and a few others like Dan Watson were pioneering new types of crazy deathcore vocals.

This change just happened, but here’s a look of Ian on vocals at a recent Angelmaker show.

I didn’t realize this, but before Ian joined, they were touring with Big Chocolate filling in on vocals. Big Chocolate is another legendary vocalist who’s known for his slam band Disfiguring The Goddess.

Here’s a video of Big Chocolate performing live with the band. His range is crazy deep and his stage persona is pretty funny.