Incantation, Vanquish in Vengeance

Man, I haven’t heard anything from Incantation since probably 1998’s Diabolical Conquest — although I did review Funerus’ Reduced to Sludge last year and Jim McIntee appears on that album as lead guitarist, so that’s almost like hearing relatively new Incantation material, right?

Yeah, I didn’t think so either.

Well, thank all that is unholy because I’m now battering myself about the head and shoulders with Incantation’s latest full-length Vanquish in Vengeance. The ten songs on the band’s ninth studio album, and first in six years, is without a doubt some of the best material they’ve culled from the depths of Hell in quite some time. Staying true to form with plenty of rabid blasts, McIntee and crew temper that frenetic energy with massively heavy riffs that take on a more doom-oriented feeling than the band’s more traditional death metal sound of albums past. A cleaner, slightly more polished production than those previous albums also adds power and weight to the sludgy mayhem these guys are spewing.

“Invoked Infinity” sets the tone immediately with burly riffs and sick lead work, all the while delivering some massive weight upon your shoulders. The song is heavy as hell and unrelenting in its insistence on shoving itself through you ear canal and deep into the gooey gray matter you call a brain. From this point on it’s full-on Incantation at their best. You’ve been warned. “Ascend into the Eternal” gets even fuller with the crushing riffs and McIntee’s indecipherable guttural growls. The drum work on this song and especially the next (the thrashy “Progeny of Tyranny”) are hell-bent on pulverizing you into dust.

The guys take a different path with the unhinged and scatter-brained, yet still desolate, doomy and appropriately titled “Transcend into Absolute Dissolution.” The song feels like you’re experiencing a mental breakdown in real-time. The ultra-dense and sludgy “Haruspex,” — which, if Wikipedia is correct, is a disturbing religious practice if ever there was one — will pull you deep into its smothering folds and riffs before bludgeoning you unconscious with pile-driving drums. The title track drags you behind the galloping hooves of the Four Horsemen as they fly across the barren lands of Hades, your tattered corpse falling to pieces in the process. Essentially, it’s a fucking killer song.

I’m not sure what else to say about Vanquish in Vengeance except, “What the fuck are you waiting for!?” Get out there buy this bestial slab of death/doom. You know you want to.