January 8, 2012

Incantation - Onward to Golgotha & Diabolical Conquest


Cover art by Miran Kim

Incantation's Onward to Golgotha from 1993 is now available on the Relapse Alumni Bandcamp; together with Diabolical Conquest from 1998 and the rest of Incantion' Relapse discography. Onwards to Golgatha takes you back to the days when this sound was unique, before so many bands made entire careers out of aping the "Incantation sound". A genre-defining classic for sure, still Diabolical Conquest may be an even better album. The basic style is there in full force; a mix of slow, plodding doom metal and speedy, relentless death metal. But it sounds more aggressive than Onwards to Golgotha, and the song writing is just a little tighter in my opinion. Usually I would write "but check both albums out for yourself, and make up your own mind", but you can only stream a single track from each album...

Photo by Carmelo Española.

On the Relapse Alumni Bandcamp you can find entire Relapse discographies of many bands formerly associated with the label. Besides Incantation, there's High on Fire, Mastodon, The Dillinger Escape Plan, and many others. Bob from Relapse Records explained the concept of the Alumni Bandcamp to me:
We're going to be uploading a lot of classic albums to the alumni bandcamp of some of our largest bands. These albums we don't necessarily want to stream in their entirety or make artist pages for them since they are no longer affiliated with the label, so we figured this was the best way to still promote and sell them plus offer fans higher quality downloads!
To which I can only add: Great idea! My only criticism is that just streaming one track from each album is not enough (in the case of Diabolical Conquest the track chosen is the only instrumental on the album!). In my opinion 2-3 carefully selected tracks (or simply all!) would allow the listener to get a better feel for the music on the album.


[Go to the post to view the Bandcamp player]

[Go to the post to view the Bandcamp player]

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