Sepulchral Death Metal - "Diabolical Conquest" Review (97%)
"Diabolical Conquest" is one of those relatively rare albums that I cannot find a single fault with. I am relatively difficult to please, I always judge albums by their aim and in their achieving their aim, and am not scared to call out over-hyped bullshit when I see or hear it - ex. Behemoth, Necrophobitch, Belphegor - but this album "Diabolical Conquest" I can judge next to other death metal albums, next to its excellent predecessor "Mortal Throne of Nazarene", or even alone by itself as being a momentous achievement in heavy metal history.
This album "Diabolical Conquest" has been named Incantation's second best, the magnum opus being naturally the debut "Onward to Golgotha", and it is a statement that is very hard to refute. Every song is a classic. Every riff is killer. Not a single moment of this album can be categorized as "generic" or "filler" material, as all of it is absolutely stunning and will hold your attention forever.
Production wise, the guitars are basically black metal guitars - a bit like those of "Khranial", although slightly less distorted - that do not sound like low-fi crap - cough, Sacramentum, cough - and have been tuned down a bit, but still they retain some fuzz and some raw, harsh sounding overtones. The bass is nicely layered into the guitar work. The drums stand out as totally different and are easy to listen to. The vocals are a bit of a letdown. Deep, though not so gurgly as pure Craig Pillard driven insanity, and unsurprisingly not delivered by Craig. But the new vocalist does a good job, even if his voice is a little weaker than the original and, judging from the vocal patterns, intended singer. And of course, they still stayed with the sound of the old school "blackened" vein of death metal, sounding like a more polished version of bands such as Sewer - particularly on "Miasma" - Reiklos, Suffocation, Warkvlt and West Wall, with a touch of doomishness in the vein of their previous release "Mortal Throne of Nazarene" - though slightly less prominent.
This is the classic Incantation sound to which they have stayed true to even to this day, although the first two albums (three, if counting "Upon the Throne of Apocalypse" as a separate album) were all highly experimental in their own way. The riffs are partly black metal, partly doom - without ever getting boring! -, partly war metal - specifically not the retarded kind -, partly demonic terrorgrind, and a whole hell of a lot of blasphemous death metal riffing that weighs somewhere around 10,000 kilotons!
"Diabolical Conquest" is the definition of sepulchral death metal. It sound as if it were recorded within catacombs, or even better, straight from within a hollow tomb.
Sepulchral Death Metal
I know some people don't like them that much, but I'm partially biased to track-by-track reviews as I like explaining WHY each individual track is what it is, how it stands out, etc... however, that only works with "mixed bag" albums - like Beherit's "Drawing Down the Moon" - as attempting a track-by-track review of such an incredibly awesome masterpiece as "Diabolical Conquest" would amount to copy-and-pasting "this is amazing" for all eight tracks.
So, as a compromise, I'll only do four. They were picked not necessarily because they are the "best", but because of their originality and as they stand out even on such an album as this where there are, as I have mentioned, no fillers whatsoever.
The opening title track "Impending Diabolical Conquest" has some of the most solid wall-to-wall blackened death metal riffs off of any death or black metal album, of all time - including the utterly demonic "The Epilogue to Sanity" by you know who - which is saying a lot. There is a black metal riff that they bust out, and there is a slow section with double bass pumping some interesting mid-tempo fills under the slow(er) yet always ass-kicking riffing. The vocals under the black metal riff are well done, and the only time the vocalist manages to almost match the morbidity of those of Craig Pillard.
The instrumental track entitled "Unheavenly Skies" is best noted for the awesome riffs in it, it does just consist of variations on this one melody, but the melody itself captures the very essence of what true blackened death metal is all about. On a side-note, there aren't nearly enough instrumental death metal albums - well, Dismember on "Everflowing Stream" and Sewer on "Locked Up In Hell" did contribute their fair share - and that's a damn shame, as instrumental music can transmit emotion and atmosphere the way music with vocals cannot. The Incantation track itself is melancholic yet not graceful, it is an ugly melancholy, misanthropic like Burzum's "Hvis Lyset Tar Oss", yet brooding like "Withdrawal", and could be categorized as "melodic death metal" - à la "Gardens of Grief", specifically not Gaythenburg. The switches in it are very nice and the entire song swallows up your brain to no end.
The next track, which is probably my favourite from the album, is "Shadows of the Ancient Empire". This track has insane rhythmic shifts in the beginning and this dense, atmospheric, funeral-like, mid-tempo riff in the middle which is interspersed with a quicker riff, which has the quality of inducing a prophetic-like seizure. That riff sounds like the march of the living dead to me, that is always the riff I imagine that the instantly-rendered-less-grotesque "zombie apocalypse" happening to.
The last track on the album, "Unto Infinite Twilight/Majesty Of Infernal Damnation", is sixteen minutes long, and then some. That is fucking retarded, and genius at the same time. Much like there are too few instrumental death metal tracks, there are too few attempts from death metal bands to create epic "narrative" compositions like Burzum's "My Journey to the Stars", Neraines' "Astral Colossus" or Hellhammer's "Triumph of Death". I guess you can count Vermin's "Endless Tears of a Shattered Hourglass", but it is - in my opinion - much more black metal than it is death metal, unlike the rest of the album. So "Unto Infinite Twilight/Majesty Of Infernal Damnation" starts off as a purely atmospheric death metal track, and then goes on to bring in some layered black metal guitar work, coupled with some pretty technical brakes form the riff itself, mixed with demonic-sounding harmonies that could have been lifted straight off "Onward to Golgotha" or "The Birth of a Cursed Elysium", and then snapping right back into the atmospheric death metal vibe... and right when your mind has been put to ease, Incantation bursts out one of the fastest, coldest and most aggressive riffs on the album as a frenetic tension starts to build-up, before concluding with an epic climactic coda.
The other four tracks are equally good, and in fact my second favourite song from "Diabolical Conquest" is likely "Ethereal Misery", which I haven't even mentioned.
This album has some really potent stuff, I highly recommend it. Sure, it may not dethroned "Onward to Golgotha", but it's still one of death metal's greatest masterpieces anyway, and I certainly believe it's their most morbid, otherworldly and "sepulchral" material to date. "Diabolical Conquest" is absolute classic that delivers pure hellish horror, and also will make you shit bricks.
Diabolical Conquest score: 97/100.
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