It’s been a crazy year, and things have gotten away from me a little bit, so apologies for the late review, but this one was too epic not to write it up. Blood Incantation teamed up with the Empty Bottle to put on one of most unique metal shows I have seen personally. For those of you not from Chicago, Empty Bottle is an iconic bar/venue located in the Ukrainian Village neighborhood on the near west side, and they run a concert series – Beyond The Gate – bringing outdoor shows to the Bohemian National Cemetery. The setting for this one could not have been better.
Blood Incantation is progressive death metal band out of Denver, Colorado, and they’re nothing like death metal I remember locking myself in my bedroom listening to in the late O’s . Since 2016, they have been pushing the limits of their sound, putting out massive 13-minute-long ballads that rocket you through time and space. Their new album, Absolute Elsewhere, is split into two 20-minute tracks, which for a photographer who’s usually only allowed to shoot the first three songs is a dream. The albums two songs, The Stargate and The Message, weave together heavy fantasy and sci-fi overtones that question the existence of extraterrestrial intelligent life juxtaposed to the purpose of life on earth.
As the sun was setting over the mausoleum Blood Incantation kicked it off with The Stargate [Tablet I]. As Tablet I transitioned out of its classic death metal intro, it opens up into a psychedelic interlude that sounds like it was written by Steve Vai, evoking the image of a Buck Rogers-esq explorer looking out on the vast expanse of outer space.
They worked through Absolute Elsewhere front to back and what really stole the show were frontman and guitarist, Paul Riedl, and Morris Kolontyrsky’s constant headbanging windmill guitar solos. The second half of the album “The Message” opens into a bridge that could have been straight out of Pink Floyd’s Animals and provides epic tension releasing contrast to the heavy death metal segments and still manages to build to a final crescendo that leads into a crushing final act before releasing into the void.
Absolute Elsewhere is a meticulously crafted and orchestrated album and the musical experimentation they leaned into culminated in one of my favorite albums of 2024 and favorite shows of 2025. I will sign up every time they’re in town to get my face melted off by insane guitar riffs, planetarium style lasers, and non-stop windmilling.
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