When seeing Blood Incantation support Arcturus in 2017, little did I know the Americans would be the ones to thereafter be responsible for best probing the galaxial reaches – notwithstanding the Norwegians' long and respectful career of astral aspiration – as Blood Incantation’s amazing 2019 full-length ‘Hidden History Of The Human Race’ in particular drove the quartet beyond immediate orbit to comb the stars for suitable confrontation. While the group’s renowned death metal explorations have looked for alien life to end our own, ‘Timewave Zero’ sheds the metal instrumentation for an array of synthesizers and integrated analogue electronics, used to wind out long-form meditative compositions which betrays the realisation that the weight of the universe can crush humankind without extra-terrestrial intervention.
Opener “Io” builds steadily on its opening synth drone, further tonal layers added repeatedly as its base elongated tone is used to trigger thriving layered drone, smaller synth flickers and light , before blossoming into a melodic arpeggiation which flickers the underlying drone to life, finding a contour which supports the upper register as it reaches full Tangerine Dream worship mode. Even when the piece returns to an unchanging droned note it can’t escape the tender chordal shapes which have now emerged, with subtle waveform shifts and derivative melodic shapes opening space for lingering acoustic guitar to weave its own chordal shapes into the trembling synth layers.
Second side “Ea” launches straight into those familiar arpeggiated melodies, additional single note lines supporting that shape with the piece maintaining a greater momentum than “Io”’s peaks and troughs. Even when the synths decline in “Ea” there’s a more active acoustic guitar added to pick out the piece’s ongoing chordal refrain as the melody line remains with the synth (and what I think is a subtle gong is added in the distance), before returning that task to the electronics with some classic dense synthesis and slowed discourse, before descending into a final tonal melt. While neither track is better or worse for it, “Ea” has a more homogenous approach than “Io”, perhaps hitting a more intuitive or familiar shape than “Io” which binds “Ea”’s parts tighter than the wave forms of the first side.
Get any of the vinyl pressings and you’ll get a CD of the same material. However the CD/blu-ray set includes an additional track, “Chronophagia” – also locatable with some resourceful YouTube-ing. The additional track flows with a distinctly darker Lustmord-ian hue or pallour lifted from Klaus Schulze’s bleakest solo work, shadowy electronics underpinning a more inhibited effort than the album proper. The strong arpeggios of “Io” and “Ea” emerge only hesitatingly and nervously, muted by “Cronophagia”’s swelling central desolate tones, thick fumes of displeasure, and comparably uncomfortable harmonic profile. The billowy profile of the piece seems to be hiding something, and it eventually that proves correct: as the smog clears a languid melody emerges with strong overtones of Vangelis’ ‘Blade Runner’ soundtrack, supported by a clean upper register piano refrain and remnants of the group’s still smouldering electronics. If “Io” and “Ea” give the impression that space travel was some stream-of-light euphoria, “Cronophagia” is a reality that the travel is one of isolation, darkness, and emptiness: for all their far-flung searches, Blood Incantation are still confined to the same flesh vessels as the rest of us.
‘Timewave Zero’ wears its influences boldly and plays to them closely, even down to the meditative outdoor scene in the gatefold which could easily have been plastered inside ‘Ricochet’ or ‘Encore’. The reaction from those looking only for more of what ‘Hidden History Of The Human Race’ offered, is predictable albeit understandable, but the chance to do something different – and do it convincingly – is for me even more exciting. With its intentionally regressed soundset ‘Timewave Zero’ is a break from expectations but also cleverly within idiom, opening Blood Incantation up to further exploration and ambition whether they break from their tradition again or not.
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