Live - Blasphemy in Brazil Tour 2001

Incantation was always a band that seemed enigmatic to me. When I was first getting into death metal, from like 2001-2004, they never seemed to be anywhere.... I'm from Albany, NY, and they never came up here, and I only ever saw them in Metal Maniacs once, and it wasn't even a feature story.

They were always just okay in my opinion; I was too busy clutching onto my numerous copies Morbid Angel's "Formulas Fatal To The Flesh" to really notice anything else anyway.

But then just a month or 2 ago, I downloaded Incantations entire discography, because I hadn't listened to them in YEARS. All of a sudden... WOW. I was fucking hooked. I was dumbfounded. Incantation is so.... dense. They're fast and heavy, but they're VERY THICK. The problem is that their records typically suffered at the hands of bad production, and a thin, less-saturated guitar sound. When I found out that they had a live album, I knew I just HAD to get it to see how they were when experienced live. I snagged one of ebay, and that was that.


My first impressions were how great the sound actually is. It has to be a soundboard tape, because audience tapes don't get this pristine. I listen to Phish, and they let people tape their shows, and some of the tapers have GNARLY mic setups, but even then they still can't match the crispy fidelity of a soundboard tape, qualities that this recording does have in spades.

Overall, this would a perfect introduction to the band, as the material equally spans their entire career up to that point. Every record is represented, with their debut and 2 most recent albums having equal appearances (4 songs each). And for the most part, they are the best songs from those albums. My only complaint is that they didn't play the song "Golgotha". I mean, its the title track to their debut, and probably most important album. But oh well.


The band is tight, though. Everything is on cue, and there are no mess ups anywhere to be heard, as far as I can tell. And while Mike Saez is no Craig Pillard, he does a fantastic job, and sounds great. Its kinda funny, though, when he keeps screaming "YEAHHH!!!! YEAHHHH!!!!" and "METALLL!!!!! MORE METALLLL!!!!!" in between songs at multiple points. But i guess thats what you do when theres a language barrier.

The sound is really good though. Everything is clear and you can hear everything, even the bass. Its not blatanly audible, the way it is on like, Suffocation records, but you can feel its rumble and it blends in with the guitars in a way that really fills out the sound. Incantation tunes down to C anyway, so its gonna be heavy, but it makes it all the more killer when the bass is mixed properly with the rest of the band.

The drums sound great, too; they're obviously triggered, but they've got great trigger samples to use. It SOUNDS like a REAL drum kit, which is my gripe with every modern band that makes their drummer sound like a bunch of people smacking plastic forks on a wall.

The guitar tone could be dialed in better, in my opinion, but thats just a matter of personal tone taste, I guess.

But there really isn't any down part of this release.... the track listing is great. Starting off with a new tune from the new album, "Anoint the Chosen" does the trick of getting everybody into Incantations groove of double bass, blast beats, and mid-tempo doom sludge. Next, they slam into one of my favorite tracks, the highly underrated "Unholy Massacre". This track is great because it mixes Incantations blast-beat-brutality with their unique sense of melody. Its not a melodic song, mind you, but the one speed picked riff has a great melodic movement to it, the way Morbid Angel's "Rapture" does in the beginning.

They do a great job of mixing up the material, too, as there aren't any back-to-back album repeats. Each song is from a different album. The one thing I noticed, though, is that the track lengths have a definite pattern to them. The first 3rd of the album is all medium/normal length songs, followed by shorter songs in the middle 3rd, and then the last 3rd having longer songs. I'm not sure if that was conscious or not, but it definitely gives the album a very even flow.

The album wraps up with Deliverance of Horrific Prophecies as an encore, which is a fucking KILLER track. I'm not sure what they're intent was, but as much as I love this song, I feel like they could have gone for something a little more hard-hitting, like "Golgotha" or something, but I guess by this time they knew that the crowd had been sufficiently decimated, and could do no more than headbang joyfully to the killer riffage of "Deliverance of Horrific Prophecies."


All in all, you should definitely get this album if you like Incantation. The quality isn't quite as perfect as Morbid Angel's "Entangled In Chaos" is, but its damn fucking good. If you're at all familiar with their material, this would be a great sampling exercise to get a wider range of exposure. I'm not sure this would be the best thing to give a n00b who is completely unfamiliar with the band, as some of the finer details do inevitably get lost in the mix.

But this is definitley a great snapshot of a truly underrated band doing what they do best, and doing it well. Go buy this album!!!!!