Review by Rexorcist for Blood Incantation - Interdimensional Extinction (2015)

This is the first of their releases to get great ratings online.  Starting this short EP with The Vth Tablet, I found that the song's production was practically perfect, but as far as a progressive metal song goes, I'm not quite sure I haven't heard this before.  It's great to hear them expanding their horizons, and finding very careful ways to include synths, but this track didn't greatly interest me until 3-minutes in when the guitar solo started, and that's when things got rough.  Unfortunatley, the song ended like 30 seconds later... Not the best way to introduce the new production.  Thankfully, Obfuscating the Linear Threshold showed a major improvement in how the "convoluted" (as one Bandcamp reviewer mentioned) percussions and riffs came together.  This one was a much more unpredictable song that often jolted into different vibes so quickly that they may have been different songs.  So while all of these parts are cool, this song feels more like a disjointed collective rather than a perfectly fleshed out piece of art.  But don't get me wrong, there are easily some 9/10 bits in this otherwise 8/10 song.  I'd just prefer less "Look what I can do" and more "listen to the song."

Hovering Lifeless kicks off side B with a quieter guitar tone but a complex and somewhat jazzy drum session.  This song, once again, is done before, but maintains the both the intrigue and the structural flaws of the previous track.  These guys are incredible at blast beats, but the constant jolts into totally different vibes with no sense of build up kind of goes against itself.  Death's Symbolic had a damn good sense of build up and maintained the technical aspects they invented on Human quite flawlessly.  It was nice, however, to get a synth solo, even though it was short as hell, and even ends the damn song.  Finally, there's Subterranean Eon.  This one starts out with a stronger sense of balance between complexity, melody and the switches between different levels of heaviness.  This maintained a straightforward yet ever-shifting composition that remained interesting throughout most of its length.  Easily the best track, IMO.

So if I had to describe this album quickly, I'd say it's "much cooler than it is good."  It's a largely riff-oriented album that shows the band sometimes confusing unpredictability with "prog metal."  The general vibes are great and the production is almost perfect, but there needs to be more death metal vocals and more time to flesh all these ideas into other songs.  Still, this is easily the best of the three so far.  Kinda glad this isn't getting on the 80-100 chart and taking up space, which means I may have room for the new Deafheaven.

78/100