Blood Incantation brought ‘Absolute Elsewhere’ to life in NYC (review)

The already-great Blood Incantation made a major leap this year with their new album Absolute Elsewhere, which isn’t just one of the year’s best metal albums but one of the year’s best albums in general. Coming five years after their breakthrough album Hidden History of the Human Race, an album that injected expertly-executed death metal with a hefty dose of prog–and taking an ambient detour with 2022’s Timewave Zero and building a Luminescent Bridge between albums on last year’s two-song single–Absolute Elsewhere takes the band much further down that path into territory that’s full-on death metal and full-on ’70s-style progressive rock all at once. They’re masters of both, and they’re also masters at weaving them together in ways that are mind-bendingly seamless.

They recorded the album at Berlin’s world-famous Hansa Tonstudio, and it comes off like an ambitious undertaking of studio wizardry, but, as we speak, Blood Incantation are on a headlining North American tour that finds them bringing Absolute Elsewhere to life, and the live performance is just as much a feat as the album itself. They played a sold-out show last night (11/26) at the Brooklyn venue Elsewhere (nice), and they performed the album from start to finish, taking it through all of its twists and turns without missing a beat, only pausing in between the album’s two 20-ish minute pieces (“The Stargate” and “The Message”) to let the crowd know they’d just wrapped up the former and were about to begin the latter. As they played, they were flanked by two Egyptian-style obelisks with lit-up hieroglyphics that matched the pyramid theme of the album artwork, and they had a giant version of their logo and the album’s color scheme on the backdrop behind them. The live performance was just as seamless as the album, and one of the show’s biggest thrills was watching Blood Incantation fade out of death metal mode into progressive rock mode and vice versa. With Nicklas Malmqvist of Swedish prog band Hällas on synths, they recreated every aspect of Absolute Elsewhere. Mosh pits broke out during the heaviest death metal parts, and the crowd stood there in a daze during the prog/psych passages. Paul Riedl’s soaring clean vocals were just as captivating as his monstrous grunts. Morris Kolontyrsky’s many solos qualified him as a contemporary guitar god. And on top of how impressive the performance was from a technical standpoint, it was also a total blast to experience. Absolute Elsewhere offers up one memorable part after the next, and each transition last night felt just as exciting as the last.

After wrapping up Absolute Elsewhere, Blood Incantation played one song from Hidden History (“Inner Paths [to Outer Space]”) and then left the stage as Nicklas Malmqvist kept the crowd in suspense with ambient synthwork. After a few minutes, drummer Isaac Faulk returned to add shimmering gong to Malmqvist’s atmosphere, and then the rest of the band came back on stage to wrap up with “Obliquity of the Ecliptic,” the nine-minute death metal workout from Luminescent Bridge single. It was a great way to wrap up an all-around great night.

Opening this tour is The Flenser-signed, Grouper-esque artist Midwife, a decidedly non-metal artist who happened to be a perfect fit. Her slow, dark, quiet music had the crowd of metalheads in a hypnotized silence as she built suspense for the cathartic release that we all knew was coming next. They of course could’ve just stacked the bill with other death metal bands, but this felt like intentional, artistic curation, and Midwife sounded fantastic. The vibe between sets felt intentional too, with songs that likely influenced Absolute Elsewhere (like David Bowie’s “Warszawa” and Kraftwerk’s “Pocket Calculator”) being played over the PA.

The Blood Incantation/Midwife tour continues through December 5. Check out a video from the Philly show and the list of all remaining dates below…

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Setlist
Absolute Elsewhere
The Stargate [Tablet I]
The Stargate [Tablet II]
The Stargate [Tablet III]
The Message [Tablet I]
The Message [Tablet II]
The Message [Tablet III]

Inner Paths (to Outer Space)

Encore:
Obliquity of the Ecliptic

Blood Incantation / Midwife — 2024 Tour Dates
Nov 27: Boston, MA – Brighton Music Hall
Nov 29: Montreal, QC – Fairmount
Nov 30: Toronto, ON – Lee’s Palace
Dec 01: Detroit, MI – Magic Stick
Dec 03: Chicago, IL – Metro
Dec 04: Minneapolis, MN – Fine Line
Dec 05: Omaha, NE – Bourbon Theater