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INCANTATION
Dirges Of Elysium

Listenable (2014)
Rating: 8.5/10

I’ve never forgotten the dark days of when Pennsylvania’s Incantation raped my ears with their 1992 debut Onward To Golgotha. Sure, it may have reeked of that twisted Morbid Angel-style of evilness, but it was another hefty arrow to be added to the genre’s already burgeoning quiver.

Through thick and thin these guys have trudged on through the decades and trends, believing in their demolition hammer of a sound that has kept death metal fans slobbering in joy. And so now we come to Incantation’s tenth rhapsody in black, emerging just two years on from 2012’s Vanquish In Vengeance.

The album boasts ten tracks, and features the trio of John McEntee (vocals / guitar), Chuck Sherwood (bass) and Kyle Severn (drums). Although McEntee is the only original member, Incantation remain a force to be reckoned with in the extreme metal field and refuse to go away, and because their sound is so blistering Incantation is now very much an immovable object.

After the brief intro, the band hurl themselves into an unholy orgasm of death metal called ‘Debauchery’, fuelled by raging drums, an avalanche of violent, twisted guitars and McEntee’s effortlessly demented coughs. Just like Morbid Angel – who it’s only natural that Incantation are often compared to – the sickness really strikes the flesh in the form of those putrid slower moments which are then sliced in two by the razor wire mayhem of the flailing solos and pacier percussive rushes.

An Incantation album is always going to be a hellish ride and Dirges Of Elysium does not disappoint, because while the band have never been a band to throw in frills, their consistency means that they never fall short on their releases, and one can never be dissatisfied with such devilish derangement.

The thickness of the sound is one to behold as the pace quickens in soul-destroying fashion for ‘Bastion Of A Plague Soul’ with its super-quick timing and effortless pattern shifts. Although these guys have shifted into the modern realm with astuteness they now sound like an unkempt marrying of Morbid Angel and Autopsy, which is no bad thing, and as the mournful, dissonant chords leak from the wounds of ‘Bastion Of A Plague Soul’, such a comparison seems justified.

Even John McEntee’s throat has taken on to relieving itself via an array of phlegm-coated squawks and burps, and by the time ‘Carrion Prophecy’ has lumbered into the fray on doom-laden wings, I can only stand agog in awe at the way the band nonchalantly wades through the sickening riffs of gore and injects varying styles of misery. ‘Carrion Prophecy’ is impure sombre gore-gloom made all the more bony and splintered by those mashing, marching drums as the pace quickens to allow the track to accelerate further.

‘From A Glaciate Womb’ begins with more melancholy as the yawning guitar makes its entrance like a sore-encrusted troll awakening from under its bridge of woe. Again, the track lumbers, creeps and wallows without any other intention except to suffocate. ‘Portal Consecration’ decides to accompany ‘From A Glaciate Womb’ in its woeful, graceless tirade, but this time the hook is one of utmost horror before the tune almost grinds to a fiendish halt, only to pivot eventually on bony frame and catapult the listener into a flurry of unexpected maniacal speed.

And as each track introduces itself, Incantation follow a similar vein – leading the listener in with a sense of foreboding, only to batter them senseless eventually with those wild chords, perverse beats and McEntee’s vocal murder which ranges from bubbly, ogre-like choke to bloated behemoth rant.

It’s all ungodly but all so bloody brilliant, and with ‘Charnel Grounds’ smouldering from the stench of charcoaled flesh and the blustering bluster of ‘Dominant Ethos’ dragging us into the mud-clogged shredder that is ‘Elysium (Eternity Is Nigh)’, I hold up my severed stumps in surrender for another harangue of hate from one of death metal’s most criminally underrated bands.

Neil Arnold

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