BLOOD INCANTATION — Hidden History of the Human Race (review)

BLOOD INCANTATION — Hidden History of the Human Race album cover

Album · 2019 · Death Metal

4/5 · 2024-07-21
UMUR

"Hidden History of the Human Race" is the second full-length studio album by US, Colorado based death metal act Blood Incantation. The album was released through Dark Descent Records in November 2019. It features the same quartet lineup who recorded the band´s debut full-length studio album "Starspawn" from August 2016. Three of the four members of Blood Incantation are also involved in death/doom metal act Spectral Voice and they released the "Eroded Corridors of Unbeing" debut album with that band in October 2017, so it´s been some busy years for at least some of the members of the band.

Stylistically the four tracks on the 36:20 minutes long album continue the technical/progressive yet old school oriented death metal style of the preceding releases, but Blood Incantation have improved in all departments since their debut album. The songwriting is now more memorable and less chaotic, the band are even more well playing, and "Hidden History of the Human Race" features more detailed and powerful production values than the releases which came before.

Blood Incantation are still worshippers of the cavern mode old school death metal style of Incantation, but they are so much more than that, as they add highly technical playing and progressive song structures to the mix, making their sound and overall style relatively unique for the genre. So while this at times is both brutal, grim, and murky old school death metal with abysmal deep unintelligible growling, it´s at other times progressive and atmospheric music painting a very different picture than the basis raw and brutal death metal of the band´s music.

As mentioned "Hidden History of the Human Race" features four tracks. The first three are between 5 and 7 minutes long, while closing track "Awakening From The Dream Of Existence To The Multidimensional Nature Of Our Reality (Mirror Of The Soul)" is an 18:02 minutes long track and naturally the most progressive oriented track on the album, although the remaining tracks are by no means regular death metal songs either. Every track on the album features twists and turns, challenging musical ideas, and song structures which are quite unconventional and doesn´t feature regular vers/chorus format structures (if something is repeated it´s definitely not done in an easy commercial manner).

So this is quite challenging music and "Hidden History of the Human Race" may not initially resonate with all listeners, but it´s worth giving many spins, because as challenging as it may be, it´s also quite brilliant and the tracks have a great flow. It¨s not an easy feat to write material which is not cyclical but instead almost linear in structure without losing catchiness and recognizability, but I think Blood Incantation do a great job on "Hidden History of the Human Race" doing just that. Add to that the fact that they are still pretty authentic old school death metal and don´t appear sophisticated technical for the sake of it, and there´s a further plus in the book. A 4 star (80%) rating is fully deserved.