BLOOD INCANTATION
Hidden History Of The Human Race DARK DESCENT/CENTURY MEDIA
Denver death metallers go boldy where no band has gone before SCI-FI AND DEATH
metal are natural bedfellows; both of them attempt to push the boundaries of our imagination and are considered as outcasts. Yet for the most part, when cosmonauts sporting Morbid Angel t-shirts have aimed for the stars, they’ve taken the space rock/hawkwind route, filling their music with effects and lyrical references to evoke the vastness of space.
In recent years, Mithras and newcomers such as Nucleus have done their best to reach out to extreme metal and Carl Sagan fans alike, but if Nocturnus AD’S reunion album felt like a good yet familiar Star Wars flick, Hidden History Of The Human Race is the musical equivalent of Interstellar: a profoundly more cerebral yet thoroughly spectacular effort.
Not that Blood Incantation’s second full-length isn’t muscular. At 37 minutes and only four tracks, it goes straight for the throat from the get-go: Their core sound is surprisingly earthy, cemented by a very analogue yet crystal-clear sound, with everything recorded on tape. But while death metal usually feels like an explosion with its blastwave reaching as far as possible, Hidden History Of
The Human Race is a mindbender, heading into the warped contours of inner space and openly written under the influence of psychedelics. It’s simultaneously brutal and progressive and while the epic 18-minute conclusion, Awakening From The Dream Of Existence To The Multidimensional Nature Of Our Reality, will rightly get most of the attention, even the shorter tracks such as the seven-minute-long The Giza Power Plant are as just colourful, convulsive yet spacey and are always fascinating trips. As David Bowman was (almost) saying at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey: My God, it’s really full of stars. ■■■■■■■■■■
FOR FANS OF: Demilich, Morbid Angel, Immolation
OLIVIER BADIN