It’s 2025 and a band are playing the Garage in Glasgow. The band’s latest album, which they will play in full, is a piece of progressive music with only one song on side one and one more on side two. This gig hasn’t just sold out; it’s been sold out for months. And if there was a larger available venue, it would probably have been moved.
To begin with, can we just take a minute to get our collective heads around all of that?
Surprising as that all reads, Blood Incantation’s 2024 album Absolute Elsewhere was many people’s album of the year in metal, and some are even already describing it as the album of the 2020s.
First up, opening act Sijjin were a late addition to the bill and had the unfortunate job of opening the show only ten minutes after the doors had actually opened. Offering up death metal with a technical and at times thrashy edge, they built rapport with a crowd that was gradually filling up the hall. Vocalist Malte Gericke reminds me of a more guttural version of Destruction vocalist Marcel Schirmer (who, funnily enough, I would be seeing the next evening). Favourite song from this band was “Religious Insanity Denies Slavery”.
Next up, Oranssi Pazuzu were a real contrast. Much more experimental and atmospheric than Sijjin, although they come with a description as psychedelic black metal, to contrarian ole me they presented far more as avant-garde experimental post-metal. With the hall having substantially filled up over the course of Sijjin’s set, Oranssi Pazuzu seemed to slow-burn their way into the crowd’s consciousness, with the crowd warming to them throughout their set and giving a great reception as they left the stage.
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The main component of Blood Incantation’s set is the Absolute Elsewhere album played in full. For the uninitiated, the songs that make up side one and side two of the album are “The Stargate” and “The Message”, and each of these songs is split into three parts or “tablets”.
How to actually describe this, though? The best way I can describe it is like a musical stream of consciousness intertwining with your own personal stream of consciousness. I was literally standing at this show and my internal conversation went something like this: Ah, this bit is totally like 70s prog rock… that slow lead part over those sixteenth-note double bass triplets is awesome… wait, now I see how they use that build-up to get to that bit that sounds like full-on black metal… man, those growls are just pure death metal… those blast beats and tremolo picking are so tight… ah, this is the bit that sounds most like Pink Floyd… wait, live that bit sounds almost like English folk music… god, I love this solo… how did we get to this bit again? And so on.
The most remarkable thing about it is that amongst all the different parts, the ridiculous range of influences, and all of the disparate elements, the genius of Blood Incantation is that in Absolute Elsewhere they mould all of it into an amazingly coherent whole that flows far more seamlessly than it should when you hear it described. In a live setting, this translates into an overarching, absorbing, emotional experience that almost moulds a collective consciousness amongst the crowd.
They follow up Absolute Elsewhere with “The Giza Power Plant” from Hidden History of the Human Race and “The Vth Tablet (Of Enûma Eliš)” from Interdimensional Extinction, before encoring with “Meticulous Soul Devourment” from Starspawn and “Obliquity of the Ecliptic” from Luminescent Bridge.
At the end of this show, Blood Incantation are greeted like conquering heroes.
Two thoughts spring to mind, though. Firstly, Blood Incantation have their work cut out to follow Absolute Elsewhere as an album. That is a very, very high bar to follow. Secondly, you wonder how long we as an audience will hear Absolute Elsewhere in full. No band does that kind of thing forever and at some point, they will move on. So, if you haven’t caught this yet, get along and see Blood Incantation doing Absolute Elsewhere live while you can. These days won’t last forever.
Header image by Julian Weigand
