I’m absolutely fascinated by the amount of good metal albums that pass under my nose. The uninterrupted recommendations of a Bandcamp followed on a daily basis nourish a musical environment that is impossible to follow. Too many good labels put on the market too much music worthy of at least deserved interest. However, it seems difficult to identify the reasons that contribute to such success without falling into pure projection, with its share of Epinal images. The metalhead would therefore be this solitary Stakhanovist, madly in love with his guitar or his drum kit, training from evening to morning to finally be able to play in a band without needing anyone. Not even a label if we are to believe the number of qualitative projects operating in total independence, archi-pro production included. And opposite there would therefore be a studious public (and inevitably metalheads), lovers of well-made music, ready to send each other big slices of electric bacon by the kilotons.
But if this absolute abundance in the ever-increasing flow of good albums available still remains a mystery (which we deliberately leave open in order to save ourselves the dozens of pages which would allow us to get to the end), a second question emerges as a negative of the first: where, in God’s name, are the gigantic metal albums? Where are the Reign In BloodTHE Chaos A.D., THE Slowly We Rot or the Powerslave ? Who to succeed Left Hand Path, Transylvanian Hunger or White Pony ? If the list seems endless, it must be recognized that many of the groups who compiled it have deserted the metal planet. We were treated to a few warning shots with the grand-guignolesque arrival of Slipknotthe balls of Hubbub or from Ghost and the subject makes us think that the beginnings of Rammstein take us back thirty years already. But who fills fucking stadiums today with anthems from bastards in leather shirts?
The question here is not to list what is good and what is not. We simply ask ourselves the question of why ten cumulative careers of Converge or from Deafhaven will never have the impact of a single album of Metallicaof Panterad’Iron Maiden or from Black Sabbath on our globalized world. Or in other words, why records like Absolute Elsewhere are not on the first page of Rolling Stone and that Blood Incantation does not really exist apart from the unanimous success of esteem reserved for him by his fanbase and almost all the somewhat serious press?
We knew since Starspawn that this group of Ricans had to be kept an eye on. What if Hidden History of The Human Race has finished convincing everyone with this mixture of prog and sci-fi death (from which the group clearly understood the aesthetic strength it could draw from for the future), how is it still possible that this latest album is in good shape of epileptic and totalitarian musical climax is not immediately inscribed in the Hall of Fame of the current metal decade?
Because everything is there: the conceptual ambition, the spirit of chivalry, the sequencing (two twenty-minute titles divided into three “tablets” each), the breathtaking technique and the composition worthy of the greatest masters. Blood Incantation completes its transformation into a techno-monster through its obsession with analog keyboards from the 70s cheesy as fuck– a monomania which saw him try with measured success on all-synth on Timewave Zero two years ago. It is thus a whole prog rock and ambient heritage which comes to fit precisely into the complex death architecture thought by the group – and if the heralds of the genre that its Tangerine Dream are only credited on one track, their influence infuses the entire record. Cathedrals of sound are formed and deformed in real time, calm and voluptuousness alternately giving way to the tornado in a succession of complex tonal permutations and truly epic emotional lifts. The record breathes as only great works can: announcing its themes in a readable manner, Blood Incantation misses absolutely nothing during these forty-five minutes and offers a definitive work, perhaps even too perfect because it is a bit too scripted.
So what’s stopping Absolute Elsewhere to embody the new global metal reconquest? Why Blood Incantation cannot be considered on the same level as Death or like the new Obituary ? Why will a work of such quality be content to painfully fill rooms with a thousand people? We will not answer it today; we just tell ourselves that violence is so everywhere around us that finally the “metal” aesthetic no longer scares many people, and that a bailiff who knocks on the door to ask for a gas bill will always be more terrifying that the best of the beatings imposed by the most oozing groups of gore metal. But the real ones know: Absolute Elsewhere is probably the record of the year 2024.
