Blood Incantation - Hidden History of the Human Race (2019)^{Release ID: 13075}

Incredible musicianship. Bad vocals. Awful Production. Love that album art though!

I very nearly bought this when it came out. I remember it in the metal section of FYE, and I was picking up random albums based on the album covers. My usual strategy was to buy something I was familiar with, and something I'd never heard that looked cool. On that particular day it came down to either this or Cattle Decapitation's Monolith of Inhumanity. I was going to see Cattle open for Cannibal Corpse in a week or two, so Monolith won out. This album art always stuck with me, though and I actually tried to find it again a few times to no avail. I imagined what it would sound like-maybe like a modernized version of Voivod, or some kind of grind core with alien style vocals and themes. Alas it's just aimless technical wanking, and that's disappointing.

Having found myself on a miniature tech-death jaunt this past couple of weeks I noticed that the highly acclaimed sophomore form Blood Incantation sat at a lowly two out of five rating in my spreadsheet where I catalogue all my albums.  This seemed harsh, even by my grumpy standards, I mean normally if I rate something so low then I don't keep it in all honesty and I also am usually clear on why it was so offensive to me.  With this one though I had no instant recollection of why I could have hated it so much so I decided to get a few more spins in over the past week to try and clear the fog somewhat.

Firstly, this is music made by talented individuals and the musicianship on display here is top notch.  Is it a little too much for me at times?  Yes.  Yes, it is.  The eighteen minute closing track (which shall not be named for conscious effort to keep the review succinct) is exhausting to say the least, notwithstanding that it does give some rewards as it moves through ambient and progressive passages, it still does not feel all that remarkable to me.  I would compare it to a multiple course dinner menu, too much in there for no obvious benefit.  And just as with aforementioned menu I can choose to leave whatever I don't find appealing and after a few minutes of that closing track I am doing other things or looking to put something else on.

Secondly, the production job on here is terrible for the large part.  I feel for the first half of the record I am fighting with it as I alter the volume, tone and balance on my speakers to try and get some sense of what is actually going on and in all honesty the production is a massive blocker to my enjoyment of this record.  Ironically I think it serves the sound best on the final track when I lose the record to its touch of excess content.  Thirdly (and finally) I just feel the hype is never quite lived up to.  As much as I acknowledge the skill of the delivery, there is nothing particularly scintillating here and the vocals lag behind the rest of the performances (albeit not well assisted by that production job).  On the plus side I have increased the rating from a two to a three.  Every cloud... 

I’ve been meaning to give high regarded Canadian death metallers Blood Incantation’s 2019 sophomore album “Hidden History Of The Human Race” a proper review ever since giving it a few casual spins shortly after release but somehow it’s taken me a full three years to get there which is more of an indication of how broad my musical passions are than anything else as there’s a very lengthy queue for my attention these days. You see, despite really enjoying the record upon first listen it very quickly became obvious that it requires “active listening” to take in all of the nuances, particularly given the dense & cavernous production job & tendency to drift into progressive self-indulgence & atmospherics at times. But here I am, fully prepared for what’s in front of me & open to emulating the extreme adoration of metalheads around the globe if the merit’s there.

It's interesting that so many people comment on how great the production job on “Hidden History Of The Human Race” is because it has it’s faults in my opinion. It does tend to sound pretty murky at times which really works for a band like Incantation but can limit the effectiveness of a more complex artist like Blood Incantation clearly aspire to be. You can certainly make out everything that’s going on but a little bit more clarity & definition in those guitars could have elevated things a bit in my opinion. The cover artwork is another source of adoration that I find interesting. It’s an attractive image of course but does it successfully highlight the dark death metal atmosphere Blood Incantation are capable of or does it really come off as being a little try-hard & portray the band as a bunch of nerdy conspiracy theorists? I tend to lean towards the latter in all honesty but let’s not let that get in the way of what is really a very solid death metal record.

The programming of the tracklisting is a topic that needs unpacking because I think the band’s management got it a little wrong by opening with the most traditional death metal number & gradually getting more progressive & expansive over the four tracks. Brutal opener “Slave Species Of The Gods” doesn’t really leave you with an accurate depiction of what to expect from the rest of the album & I think it would have been a better idea to place it after “Inner Paths (To Outer Space)” in the track 3 position with the eighteen minute prog death epic coming immediately after it. In its current configuration though we see the album opening without much deviation from the classic Morbid Angel death metal model with the dense production job giving it an atmosphere that reminds me of countrymen Tomb Mold. Second track “The Giza Power Plant” sees the riff structures immediately getting a little techier with the first signs of a more expansive approach taking the form of some Nile-influenced middle-Eastern melodies & themes. But the real gold here can be found when Blood Incantation release the shackles that are holding back their self-indulgences & go for a completely progressive approach with instrumental third track “Inner Paths (To Outer Space)” being the finest example of this in my opinion. The first half of that track sees the band opting for a more stripped back & melodic post-metal sound before taking off into fully fledged progressive metal similar to Cynic & finally returning to their death metal roots during the climax. To my ears the first half of this track is the perfect amalgamation of the band’s influences & ambitions but that’s not to discount the strength of the gargantuan eighteen-minute progressive death metal excursion that is closing number “Awakening From the Dream of Existence to the Multidimensional Nature of Our Reality (Mirror of the Soul)” mind you. This monster piece sees Blood Incantation working all of their various influences & components into the one composition that takes numerous exciting twists & turns through disparate locations like space ambient & doom/death without ever losing its natural flow. It can sound a little artsy (i.e. progressive for the sake of being progressive) at times but I think it offers enough musical substance to see it overcoming those aspersions & it ends up being the perfect way to end what was a relatively short album with a surprisingly large amount of ideas. It kinda reminds me of The Chasm’s more ambitious works in that respect.

So is “Hidden History Of The Human Race” the genuine progressive death metal classic it was made out to be at the time? Hhhhmmmm…. the short answer is no it’s not. The musicianship & execution is very good but I do think the vocals sound pretty generic. The sci-fi themes work well but I can’t say that I enjoyed the band’s progressive take on death metal as much as I do their major influences as I tend to think I’d be more likely to reach for Timeghoul’s 1994 “Panaramic Twilight” demo when I’m in the mood for this sort of thing. I just don’t think that Blood Incantation hit my death metal sweet spot as often as I’d need to be placing a record like this one on the very top shelf despite its obvious class & credentials. Still, this is a very high quality death metal release that oozes of underground credibility while simultaneously ticking more than its fair share of creative boxes so fans of the progressive death metal sound will undoubtedly find a lot to enjoy here.

For fans of Timeghoul, The Chasm & Tomb Mold.

I'm not a huge fan of modern death metal, being as it either concentrates on being excessively technical or full of juvenile "brutal" imagery, but if this is the kind of album that is coming out of another area of the current DM scene, then count me in 'cause this is the shit! Progressive, but not full of technical wankery, with a spacey atmosphere at times reminiscent of the Waste of Space Orchestra album Syntheosis, this veers from old-school death metal riffing to space rock atmospherics without adversely affecting the out and out heaviness - it even manages to shoehorn a short section seemingly borrowed from The Dark Side of the Moon into the ludicrously long-titled eighteen minute closing track, Awakening From the Dream of Existence to the Multidimensional Nature of Our Reality (Mirror of the Soul), a song that will surely be hailed as a new benchmark for an ever-evolving branch of death metal. I'm always up for a bit of sci-fi imagery and some epic songwriting to get into and this has both in spades, coupled with a great production job and performance and we have a winner of the Best Death Metal Album of the Year award.