Review Summary: Blood Incantation: The Search for More Shirts
Before embarking on the mega tour wherein they’d be openers for metal legends Gorguts, Mayhem, and Cannibal Corpse (in that order), Blood Incantation returned to the studio (briefly) to record mysterious new music. The result is the two-track
Luminescent Bridge “single”, the band’s newest experiment with seeing how much space ambient they can cram into a death metal album before fans start to notice.
Separated into two ~9 minute songs,
Luminescent Bridge is unsurprisingly very different from any of the band’s previous releases. While opening track “Obliquity of the Ecliptic” starts off in more typical Blood Incantation fashion with a proggy rhythm and doomy chugging guitars, it eventually devolves into pure synthy ambient. When the band slowly build themselves back into the music, though, the guitar leads and plodding drums actually remind more of Wolves in the Throne Room’s
Celestial Lineage (somehow with even less rhythm guitar in the mix) than they do anything in the same galaxy as
Starspawn*. The slightly longer second track “Luminescent Bridge” is about what you’d expect from a full-band space ambient track where all members are actually allowed to contribute (I am talking about Timewave Zero). As in the previous track, the band also slowly build themselves into the music as the piece progresses: first a humming synth, then a brief guitar melody, a sparse piano accompaniment, then finally drums to complete the ensemble. It unsurprisingly fizzles away into ambience afterward.
Luminescent Bridge is a pretty interesting experiment for Blood Incantation, allowing them both to rather seamlessly weave more ambient into their death metal style, as well as find an approach to full-band ambient vastly ahead of their previous attempts at the genre (I am still talking about Timewave Zero). But while it is a useful and enjoyable experiment for the band, this single still really only has one true purpose: creating a justification to design more kickass merch to sell on tour, baby!!
I mean have you seen these long sleeves? They’re sick as hell! If you somehow don’t already have one from this band (I’m assuming your government-mandated compulsory
Starspawn long-sleeve was stolen), then these new threads will definitely fill that (space) void. But you know what space you shouldn’t a-void? This tour! Have you seen this line-up? It’s nuts! Everyone’s trying to catch this thing. Hawks missed our meetup due to private obligations. That’s unfortunate. I was going to be able to lie that I’d beaten him up in the Cannibal Corpse mosh pit. Alas, it could not be. But you know what isn’t so unfortunate? This sick
four-sided long sleeve I’ve got on right now,
baby. It’s got like a red sun and supernova design above some kind of rocky-and-or-oceany planet thing. Looks cool as hell. The two songs are also pretty decent, I guess.
*(Switch to doing screams, Paul, you know you want to!)
