Sometimes, more is more. Take Blood Incantation, for example: with the release of their third album, Absolute Elsewhere, they’re officially the most thrilling prog-death-psych-ambient band on this planet or any other. Equal parts crushing riffs, muso moustache-twirling and brain-cratering meditations on quantum physics, conspiracy theories and the untapped power of the human mind, the Denver four-piece play like rock gods and talk like geodesic dome-dwelling disciples of a future religion.
“We live a very New Age-y, esoteric kind of lifestyle,” says impressively moustachio’d frontman Paul Riedl. He’s perched in front of his towering record collection, holding forth with the eloquent intensity of a professor who’s barged through the doors of perception in order to connect the dots between a vast array of disparate disciplines, sciences and histories. Guitarist Morris Kolontyrsky is on the same call, but he barely gets a word in during our conversation, such is his bandmate’s volubility.
“We’re all interested in synchronicity, serendipity and the auspiciousness of omens,” continues Paul. “I’m not bogged down by the material superstitions attached to any of these things, but like [late spiritual philosopher] Ram Dass, who wrote Be Here Now, said: when you know how to listen, everybody is the guru.”
For a band so sure about every minute aspect of their aesthetic - their sound, concept, logo and OTT t-shirt designs were all mapped out before releasing a lick of music - this open, undogmatic approach might seem surprising. It is, though, absolutely key to Blood Incantation’s outlook, and what Paul describes as “finding the correct frequency of existence”. You get the sense that, for Blood Incantation, the sky has never really been the limit: they’re focusing on the farthest reaches of outer - and inner - space instead.
“We can do a book, we can do a planetarium soundtrack, we can do a death metal tour,” says Paul of their infinite potential. “We’re here to actively contribute to life in a genuine manner and do the best that we can possibly do, which will hopefully inspire our fans and our peers to manifest the best in themselves as well.”
Absolute Elsewhere sees Blood Incantation enter the next phase of this grand mission, and in so doing chart a course that takes them far beyond metal as we currently know it. While the results are startling, there’s also a sense of predetermination at play, as though they were always following an obscure star map handed down to mankind by benevolent alien overseers.
Formed in 2011 by Paul and drummer Isaac Faulk, the line-up was later fleshed out by Morris Kolontyrsky and bassist Jeff Barrett. Each member had past form playing in a variety of extreme metal projects, as well as an interest in outlier genres like cosmic-inclined kosmische and ambient music, but it wasn’t just about having the right record collection - a shared outlook and ethos was key.
“Blood Incantation is more than just a band,” explains Paul. “It’s a whole concept, and, from the get-go, you could not join Blood Incantation unless you understood and sympathised with the concept. We wanted to make a band that specifically combined our musical interests under an umbrella of mysticism and esotericism, which is seemingly dark and occult but is ultimately very positive.”
While Blood Incantation’s lifestyle involves incense, floatation tanks, weed and totems - crystals, statuettes, influential album sleeves - placed strategically around studio and practice spaces (presumably to encourage throughflow of positive energy or something), Paul nevertheless rejects the happy-clappy toxic positivity often associated with New Age thinking. Instead, he prefers to question rather than accept cut-and-dried answers.
“In Taoism, there’s an aphorism that says ‘The Tao which can be described is not the Tao’,” he says. “It’s a very, very Blood Incantation thing. We think there’s a kernel of truth in almost anything in life, even the biggest pile of bullshit. That little tiny kernel is what we’re all about."
Having come together, the four leaned into their geographic isolation and outsider status, immersing themselves in the concept and focusing on creating something unique.
“One benefit of Colorado being a kind of island is that we were eight hours’ drive in any direction from places where any major tours were hitting,” says Paul. “It made us hungry to get out and show people what we’ve got.”
This hunger translated to a punishing practise regime, involving playing up to eight hours a day, six days a week, all while holding down multiple jobs and musical projects. Isolation and sheer bloodymindedness weren’t the only factors giving the nascent Blood Incantation an edge, however.
“Being up here, a mile above sea level and practising that intensely, makes a difference,” says Paul. “As soon as we went down to the coast on our first tour, people were like, ‘Holy shit, these guys are playing so fast, they’re headbanging, they’re so tight… how are they doing it?!’ And it’s like, well, that’s why Olympic athletes go train in the mountains!”
If Blood Incantation’s debut album, 2016’s Starspawn, put them on the map (“We thought it was either going to change everything about our lives, or that it’d be 30 years before people got it,” says Paul archly), it was 2019’s follow-up Hidden History Of The Human Race that tipped them over the edge.
A crazed, maximalist death metal odyssey, the album represented Blood Incantation’s fullest sonic manifestation to date. Its gloriously lurid aesthetics followed suit, the sleeve splashed with a bulge-eyed alien courtesy of legendary science fiction artist Bruce Pennington, and the accompanying booklet reading like a cultist manifesto that namechecked thinkers such as Carl Jung, Hermann Hesse, Aldous Huxley and Carl Sagan.
Hidden History… was rightly feted, and it felt like their star was very much in the ascendant. Their response? To release Timewave Zero, an instrumental synth album - a mischievous move, albeit one that was wholly on-brand for a bunch of musicians who’d happily wax lyrical about such musical mavericks as former Roxy Music brainbox-turned-ambient godfather Brian Eno and 70s electronic pioneers Tangerine Dream to anyone who stood still long enough to listen.
“The people who didn’t want Timewave Zero didn’t want Blood Incantation in the first place,” says Paul, of the shit-talk the record generated in certain quarters. “They just want volume, distortion and growling, and it doesn’t matter who’s playing or why they’re playing it. And that outcry, that we’re trendy, sell-out, corporate shills? It’s the antithesis of successful marketing to follow up a successful death metal record by putting out an ambient record!”
Timewave Zero was a critical success, and the lengthy writing and recording process - part group therapy session, part hippie love-in - also helped Blood Incantation unlock new potential as they focused on improvisation and rewiring neural pathways.
“We had to learn how to hear and respond more subtly to each other,” explains Paul. “It was very free, very open and very supportive, and we learned how to write in a new way.”
This novel, touchy-feely approach clearly worked, and Blood Incantation’s newfound sense of freedom is given full rein on Absolute Elsewhere. It’s a huge, dizzying work through which the band’s many facets are endlessly refracted, as they question the nature of consciousness and what it means to be human.
Recorded at the legendary Berlin studio whose patrons have included David Bowie, Depeche Mode, and *checks notes* Cold Lake-era Celtic Frost - this album is the first where they began with an entirely blank slate.
“It was life-changing,” says Paul. “We were completely removed from the safety net of our normal lives where we’d get to go home every day, hang out with our wives, watch TV and smoke pot. From sunup to sundown, we were living and breathing the album. We couldn’t do anything else if we wanted to, because everything there was contingent on this creation of this… thing.”
Sprawling across two distinct but interlinked movements (The Stargate and The Message) Absolute Elsewhere sees Blood Incantation absorb and repurpose sounds and ideas like some sort of sentient cosmic blob wrenched from the pages of a Harlan Ellison story.
Deathly bludgeon, slo-mo doom and cataclysmic black metal have roles to play, as do meditative, Eastern-influenced sections, deeply affecting vocal melodies and prog virtuosity – Blood Incantation are skilfully twining these seemingly disparate elements together to create something entirely new. Similarly, the guest spots from Thorsten Quaeschning of German electronic pioneers Tangerine Dream and Nicklas Malmqvist of cult Swedish prog-heads Hällas serve to heighten the already kaleidoscopic sound.
If the presence of the former was a high-water mark for these longtime fans of electronic music – “He invited us to his studio,” says Paul. “I was tearing up” – the latter took some convincing. “Early on Nicklas wasn’t sure what we were doing,” says Paul. “It’s like, ‘Here’s this insane, brutal metal part… now we need the Mellotron flute.’ He’s like, ‘Why?! This is not possible. You will be crucified for this!’”
Morris Kolontyrsky, getting in a rare word, views the album as a series of enormous building blocks that have been placed one on top of the other. “It’s constructed like a pyramid, an obelisk or some ancient temple,” he says. “Every little piece is there to serve a greater purpose.”
This sense of near-religious necessity is one of the things that sets Absolute Elsewhere apart: for all the thought and labour that has gone into it, nothing sounds micromanaged or overworked - everything is exactly where it is supposed to be.
Lyrically, too, the album demanded a different, freer approach, written for the first time with the aim of directly addressing the listener. While some of these lyrics are grandly esoteric (‘siphon my flesh through the Stargate!’), the album’s second half certainly conveys the positivity at the heart of Blood Incantation’s work, extolling the listener to ‘sow peace through deeds’ while highlighting those resonant elements - ‘to know thyself’, ‘to create’ - that are core to our humanity.
“For The Message I wrote the lyrics all out with this more or less stream-of-consciousness automatic writing approach,” says Paul. “It felt innately familiar, like I was channelling something, not an alien being, but definitely tapping into something outside of myself.”
This sense of setting oneself aside and viewing what you’re doing at a remove feels like an ongoing theme for Blood Incantation, from references to astral projection to simply interrogating the status quo as it’s presented.
“It’s questioning the questions and transcending dogmatism,” says Paul. “Whether it’s philosophy, conspiracy theories or esotericism, it’s always about standing above the Venn diagram. It’s like a chequerboard but we’re not in a white square or a black square - we’re up here floating around, dancing on top of the chequerboard.”
Whether they’re picking apart big ideas or simply inspired to splice the seemingly unspliceable, it cuts to the writhing core of the Blood Incantation enigma: a huge, neon-green ‘Why not?’ written in impenetrably knotty death metal logotype.
“The only reason all these things can’t be incorporated is dogmatism,” says Paul. “Being stuck in these pre-established forms is an antiquated mindset. Why limit yourself to retreading what’s already been done when you have the whole oyster of the universe to draw from?”
Absolute Elsewhere is out now via Century Media
