BLOOD INCANTATION, DEAD CONGREGATION, FACELESS BURIAL @ ALTAR, HOBART, 30-10-22

November 27, 2022

This Halloween eve show is an international affair with US metallers Blood Incantation supported by Dead Congregation from Greece and the Australian trio Faceless Burial. All three groups share vivid old school death metal elements with an appreciative Hobart audience at inner city venue Altar. Of the three, Blood Incantation most successfully inspire appraisal of metal’s evolution as a multi-faceted monstrosity.

Faceless Burial’s sonic brutality has its structural integrity in the trails blazed by DM pioneers Death, Autopsy and Suffocation. The Melbourne-based group’s 30-minute opening set is a pummelling gauntlet of ferocious drumming and crunchy riffs. Their style has drawn comparisons to Canadian revivalists Tomb Mould; they can also occasionally evoke the proto-metal leanings of prog forebears King Crimson.

Dead Congregation singer Anastasis Valtsanis is the most vociferous death growler of the evening. As lead guitarist, he works pinch harmonics that squeal like agitated pigs, recalling the infernal riff-rhythmic churn of Immolation. Renditions of ‘Vanishing Faith’ from their 2008 album Graves of the Archangels or ‘Only Ashes Remain’ from 2014’s Promulgation of the Fall typify Dead Congregation’s approach to death metal’s revivification. Tremolo picking and thunderous blast beats out of Onward to Golgotha-era Incantation or prime 1990s Morbid Angel extract plenty of inspiration from the genre’s foundations. So do the Coloradan headliners but within a more syncretic compass.

Blood Incantation’s set is drawn from their 2019 album Hidden History of the Human Race and 2016 debut Starspawn. There’s enough psych, kraut and prog proclivities here to ameliorate the absence of any material from Timewave Zero, their latest synth-dominated kosmische release. It’s a brew reflective of leader Paul Riedl’s (and indeed, the whole group’s) omnivorous tastes and reverence for a plethora of metal styles from funeral doom progenitors Thergothon and experimental death metal outliers Gorguts to the intricate prog arrangements of Opeth. A variety of tempos and compositional strategies, as well as a philosophical basis of mystic dualism in lyrical themes, gives multiscious vibrancy to this outfit’s brutalism.

The tumbling, mantric riff of Hidden History’s ‘Inner Paths (to Outer Space)’ opens the set, an interstellar pathway out of You-era Gong via Pestilence or Amon Düül II at their most phaser-wrecked (‘Paralyzed Paradise’, ‘Cerberus’). The ‘Vitrification of Blood’ suite from Starspawn has some parallels with the prog metal styles and science fiction themes of groups like Nocturnus, Voivod or Wormed. The cynicism and depravity associated thematically with some of those groups is less apparent. In terms of conceptual ambition and stylistic versatility, BI are closer to Mastodon. A title like ‘Awakening From the Dream of Existence to the Multidimensional Nature of Our Reality (Mirror of the Soul)’ from Hidden History – the gig’s penultimate song – reveals much about the group’s outlook. There’s savagery and terror here, but also a measure of ambiguity and a desire for spiritual transcendence.

There are groups that truly test metal’s porous boundaries. We can include in this list the psychedelic black metal of Oranssi Pazuzu and Blut Aus Nord, as well as Australian extremists like Portal or Plasmodium (whose textural viscosity can almost be described as freeform metal). Blood Incantation are traditionalists comparatively, but ones in touch with metal’s origins as an outgrowth of 1960s psychedelia as well as the various stylistic solidifications it has undergone in the decades since. While there’s plenty of mosh-friendly passages worthy of Deicide in the avant-metal epics they play tonight, it’s important to consider Blood Incantation as part of a heritage that holds up a psych classic like Amon Düül II’s Yeti as a foundation stone of the death/black/doom subgenres as much as the early albums of Black Sabbath or Coven.