Album Review: Blood Incantation – Hidden History Of The Human Race

If ever there was a band from the past few years whose name when mentioned got the reaction of “Those guys are sick!!”, that band would be Blood Incantation. With their previous album Starspawn going down a massive treat and an ever-growing list of tours with legendary bands such as Cannibal Corpse and Immolation, all eyes are on the Denver, Colorado quartet to see what they will deliver.

Opening up the album, the first few seconds of “Slave Species Of The Gods” begin the first of many nods to legendary acts such as Death and Cynic that appear across the album. Having a sound that wouldn’t be out of place on Human or Focus, the track remains faithful to the old-school whilst injecting a hint of modern songwriting in just the right places. “Giza Power Plant” follows and showcases the first hint of where things start to branch away from the meat and potatoes death metal. Dropping the pace and filling the soundscape with many instruments including bongos and the first of many different synth pads. It’s a refreshing change and blends perfectly with the harsher elements of the bands sound.

It’s “Inner Paths (To Outer Space)”, however, where things truly start to get a bit different. Being almost entirely ambient with trip-inducing synths for most of the track, the song is one that drummer Issac mentioned in a recent interview made some people say “Wait, this isn’t the Blood Incantation I know”. And they’d be right. It’s not the death metal which people may have come to expect from the band, but it fits the album perfectly. With the band having a lot of concepts around aliens, this track fits those concepts perfectly whilst still retaining a lot of the elements which fans of the band have come to know and love.

Ending the album after only 4 tracks, the monster that is “Awakening From The Dream Of Existence To The Multidimensional Nature Of Our Reality (Mirror Of The Soul)” takes everything introduced in the past 3 tracks and turns it up to 11. Arguably three tracks in one, the first and latter half of the track are pure Blood Incantation. Blast beats, Death-style riffs, insane leads and the growls of Paul Riedl combine to create a suitably perfect blend of modern but old school death metal. The middle portion of the track takes a leaf from previous track “Inner Paths” and acts somewhat as an ambient buffer between the two sections. The ending of the track, in my opinion, is the true highlight though. Melodic electric guitar leads and acoustic guitar parts merge seamlessly to bring to a rather haunting close what is easily the best track on the album.

Despite the album only being 4 tracks long, it feels very complete and like one long piece of music. Each song can stand on its own however, should it need to, and hits the mark just right on mixing old school riffs and production with more modern elements such as psychedelic synths and layers of other instruments. It’s this mix which keeps the album fresh after each listen and will no doubt keep you coming back for more and hitting that replay button to listen through just one more time.

Hidden History Of The Human Race is out now

Blood Incantation: facebook | bandcamp

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