FEROCIOUS DISPLAY OF ULTRA PROG DEATH METAL AND SPACE TRIPPING PSYCHE

Last night, alt pop legend Edwyn Collins played Manchester’s Albert Hall – his last ever UK gig. In a few days, 90s indie stars Sleeper move through its arches. Sandwiched in between is Blood Incantation. The place is jammed.

It’s a magnificent venue: the former chapel brings a historic elegance that fully enhances the totemic props and cosmic-ancient energies central to Blood Incantation’s philosophical quests through their chosen medium of time-bending, mind-expanding death metal.

We get latest album Absolute Elsewhere in full from start to finish – The Stargate and The Message. We get The Giza Power Plant. We get Starspawn. Stunning, every last blast and beat. But what this whole gig really feels like is 75 minutes of death metal orchestra. We know from the albums that Blood Incantation are vast and expansive, but tonight delivers such a technical, visceral and telepathically locked-in performance of extreme metal and prog dynamics that you wonder if such intense heavy fusion can ever be repeated, never mind topped. Where can Blood Incantation possibly go from here? Has this path peaked?

When Paul Riedl introduces The Giza Power Plant as a track “…from our second album Hidden History of the Human Race“, you remember that they’ve only made four. The pace of the band’s development to this gig right now seems exponential, even though they started from Starspawn’s already high bar.

Writing here as someone who’s not really into death metal but who has gone for this band in a big way, this performance went beyond all expectations: a supreme mix of aggression, blast beats, DM churn, post-metal soar and speed metal hooks with Pink Floyd and Tangerine Dream pushing through. Clear sound, crystal. Lasers and lights, a spectacle. It’s theatre without theatrics – a show where the body of music took centre stage as a massive, singular force.

Forgive the hyperventilating gush. Am still mesmerised, really. At their first ever Manchester gig, Blood Incantation damned near performed death metal levitation.

Date: October 8th, 2025.