“Absolute Elsewhere”CDDigipak,LP,Deluxe CD Boxset,Digital AlbumRelease Date:October 4th, 2024INDUCTION.PAUL RIEDL ONABSOLUTE ELSEWHERE: “Our most potent audial extract/musical trip yet;like the soundtrack to a Herzog-style Sci-Fi epic about the history of/battle for human consciousness itself,via a 70s Prog album played by a 90s Death Metal band from the future.”Blood Incantation’sAbsolute Elsewhereis unlike anything you’ve ever heard before. Yes, that’s anaudacious, possibly hyperbolic claim, but few can claim a sonic watershed as readily as this Denver,Colorado quartet. Hovering at nearly 45 minutes, their longest recording thus far, the two sprawling-yet-exacting compositions that make up this album are as confounding as they are engaging. It’s an architectureof music at odds with itself: an acceleration through a Kubrickian stargate into a realm of aural ideas inharmonious opposition, unitingunlikely binaries of aural heavens and hells. For inspiration, the group lookedto the mid-70’s progressive rock collective, Absolute Elsewhere (best known as a celestial stopover for KingCrimson drummer, Bill Bruford) as the album’s namesake. For the uninitiated, Absolute Elsewhere’slandmark 1976 album,In Search of Ancient Gods, was constructed as a musical accompaniment to theworks ofChariots of the Godsauthor, Erich Von Daniken, and his theories of non-terrestrial humanoidprompts towards mankind’s evolution. The subject matter of which should serve as no surprise to anyonefamiliar with Blood Incantation’s prior LPs and cosmically philosophical leanings. But make no mistake, thefour musicians working under the BI banner for the past decade–guitarist and vocalist Paul Riedl, drummerIsaac Faulk, guitarist Morris Kolontyrsky and bassist Jeff Barrett–have successfully left the microgravity ofgenre behind and are re-writing the Rosetta Stone of extreme music with a new language entirely.