Proclamation

If you like keyboard-driven, Gothenburg-style, melodic death metal that's catchy as ebola and both beautiful and evil enough to keep a serrated edge on it, then Incarnia’s debut album, Proclamation, will be a happy discovery. Incarnia is from Montreal, but their musical hearts reside in the land of bands like Dark Tranquillity, Insomnium, late-stage Hypocrisy, Mors Principium Est, and (more recently) Zonaria.

For a young band's debut release, Proclamation is a remarkably assured, remarkably sophisticated offering of melody-drenched melodeath that also triggers the headbang reflex quite nicely. The production on Proclamation is absolutely aces high, which is important, because the music has an epic quality that's enhanced by the brilliance of the mix and the sharpness of the sound. Most of the songs include grinding buzzsaw guitar rhythms or staccato bursts of fuzzed-out riffage, as well as machine-gun drumming, and songs like "Carrion" even allow bass sweeps to take the lead.

As confident and capable as those instrumentalists are, the keyboards are the star of this show. Vincent Grenier provides a cornucopia of sounds -- pulsating rhythms and blazing runs on "Festival of Atonement", the piano melody that organizes the music on "Led by Tears", episodes of swirling ambience on "Carrion", the beautiful soaring anthem that finishes the closing instrumental, "Affinity", and much more.

There are more keyboard solos on this album than guitar solos, but there are some soulfully sweet guitar leads on songs like "Where Fallen Apostles Assemble" and "Affinity" that achieve a wonderful tone. As for the vocals, no clean singing is to be found on Proclamation, but Marc Alexandre proves that it’s possible to still really sing -- to still achieve range and emotion and even melody -- while intelligibly giving voice to the lyrics through growls and double-bladed rasping howls.

Having said all of this, what elevates Proclamation well above the average debut is the unusual maturity evident in the songwriting. These seven songs beckon you to return again and again. Their melodies catch in your head, and their movement from the bestial to the sublime resonate: They feed that yearning some of us sometimes have for both aggressive extremity and memorable melody.

"Yersinia Pestis" isn't the best example on the album of everything Incarnia is capable of pulling off, but it's the best example of that melding of evil-sounding power and epic majesty. It's important to understand that "yersinia pestis" is the name of the bacteria that causes the black plague, because that explains the lyrics, which tell of the harrowing destruction that the disease inflicted on humanity. The lyrics are yet one more instance of Incarnia's unexpected , ahead-of-their-age, achievements. They’re literate and poetic, and they’re hard to get out of your head.

In sum, Proclamation is a very complete package of musical accomplishment that marks an auspicious start for Incarnia’s recording career.