One of the hottest bands around at the moment, (for good reason), playing in a venue I haven’t been to before, supported by another great band I’ve really wanted to see? Hard to pass up. So here we are, Blood Incantation and Oranssi Pazuzu at Manchester’s Albert Hall. Win.
There’s another band too, the openers Sijjin. Sadly due to some atrocious traffic I only get here in time to catch their last song. I don’t know the band, and don’t feel I saw enough for a review, suffice to say that they got a good reaction and gave a spirited performance from my limited exposure to them.
Right then, let’s get to it.
Oranssi Pazuzu
Atypical blackened progressive avant-garde metallic noise rockers, (or something), Oranssi Pazuzu make for an uncommon, but very enjoyable listening experience on record, so they’re a band I’ve been interested to see live.
Straight from the go, they’re captivating. It’s an overstimulating, layered assault on the senses, driven by a band that are clearly immersed deeply in what they do. Although they lose some of their music’s nuance live, they gain something else; a raw, visceral appeal that’s timeless in nature. It’s like watching a classic prog rock band, only one playing something that couldn’t have been fully realised in the past. Cross this with the simultaneous feel of a contemporary post-metal act of sorts, and you have an absorbing experience.
The music pulses and spikes, it ebbs and flows, it builds and releases. Oranssi Pazuzu shape soundscapes that are alive with breathing, perspiring life. It’s a feast of keyboard-enriched atypical soundscapes. This is what stadium dance music sounds like in another dimension. It’s strangely hypnotic, and really good.
Blood Incantation
So here it is then. Blood Incantation are no strangers to the hype machine, (see Starspawn and Hidden History of the Human Race), but with last year’s excellent Absolute Elsewhere everything went into overdrive, and the band exploded in popularity. You’ll hear no complaints from me about this, as it’s their best album for sure. It’s great to see a band of this nature playing a venue the size of the Albert Hall.
For the first 45 minutes or so Blood Incantation play the entirety of Absolute Elsewhere, and it is glorious. They recreate the songs with all of their rampant death metal proggery.
The band seem easy and natural on the stage, delivering and exploring their music with skill and passion. It’s a professionally crafted performance, but one underpinned by a love for the material. The crowd respond as you’d expect, with an equal amount of enthusiasm for the titanic album. There is much headbanging, fist pumping, and mosh pit action. Between the mammoth songs the singer reveals himself to be personable and humorous too, which is a bonus. For some reason I expected silence throughout, as it is with some bands.
As the band plough through the second colossal song it just gets better and better, all the way to its stellar finale. The conclusion is a genuinely fantastic moment, and the emotion is real. Absolute greatness.
After this, Blood Incantation dive headfirst into songs from their back catalogue. It’s a time capsule of sorts, unearthing many distinguished gems from more obscure times. More than a few people leave at this point. Whether this is because they are uninterested in Blood Incantation’s old stuff, or, (I suspect), they think they’ve finished, I’m not sure. Either way, they miss out.
They tear into The Giza Power Plant from Hidden History of the Human Race. In the context of this evening’s performance it comes across as a savage prototype for what would come later, but not in a bad way. It more than stands on its own legs, and delivers the brutal goods with its own highly engaging progressive flourish that I’m a huge fan of. The brutal ending is rewarded with a circle pit, no less.
Next up is The Vth Tablet (of Enûma Eliš) from Blood Incantation’s first EP Interdimensional Extinction. It’s a brief slab of old-school death metal muscle, that still carries a flavour of the band’s later, more expansive style.
After a brief foray into sound and texture, (Starspawn‘s Meticulous Soul Devourment), Blood Incantation unleash Obliquity of the Ecliptic as their final cut of the evening, from the EP Luminescent Bridge. It finishes everyone off nicely. Personally, I would have put the airing of Absolute Elsewhere after these older songs, so that the evening closed on the immense finale of The Message, but this is nothing more than a minor observation.
Regardless of personal preferences, this was an extremely enjoyable show. Tonight belonged fully to Blood Incantation, and it was grand.
Wonderbox Metal 