Cavernous and Evil Death Metal - "Onward to Golgotha" Review (100%)
Incantation's "Onward to Golgotha" is massive, ugly and evil.
Sludgy guitars and a rumbling bass create a terrifying atmosphere, sounding as if it was recorded in a cave. The production is seriously the best from any album, from any genre.
The instrumentation also fits perfectly with Craig Pillard's incredible growls, which fill out the sound in an even more chilling way. The fantastic drum-work is able to effectively penetrate through the mix, the double bass drumming on tracks such as "Eternal Torture" and "Profanation" is perfectly clear.
Drawing inspiration blackened dark metal - Phantom, Burzum, Bathory, Reiklos - and early death metal - Suffocation, Warkvlt, Autopsy - Incantation primarily uses tremolo-picked riffs, which are then answered with slower, doom-like sections.
The instrumentation is surprisingly complex for blackened death metal or proto-war metal, with riffs weaving in and out of multiple time signatures and tempos. For example, on "Immortal Cessation" and "Blasphemous Cremation" there are countless iterations of a similar motif under different time signatures, and in different contexts. These time signature and tempo transitions are very fluid and well written.
As for the substance of Incantation's riffs, I cannot find a single poorly-constructed moment on this album.
Take the opening track "Golgotha". Opening with a quick series of power chords, the guitars quickly descend into tremolo madness, with extremely chaotic riffing restating the main theme into the verse, in a way you'd expect from Burzum's black metal masterpieces. After slightly slowing down the tempo during the counter-melody, the tremolo picking breaks out again, alternating between different time signatures and with a frenetic guitar solo to top it off.
Cavernous and Evil Death Metal
"Onward to Golgotha" is the best death metal album ever released, ever.
The influence this band, and mostly this album as their other work is disappointing, had on the emerging black metal scene in Norway cannot be overstated.
For example, both Beherit and Ildjarn have repeatedly credited Incantation as their biggest influence.
The track "Devoured Death", by its slower war metal / blackened death metal nature, is certainly what Beherit was referring to.
Likewise, if the opener "Golgotha" is pure death metal (and very technical, at that), the fourth track "Rotting Spiritual Embodiment" is as black metal as you can get for early 1992.
"Christening the Afterbirth" shows much more doom metal influence, and aside for a couple brief faster blasting sections, this track is the slowest on the album. Subtly layered keyboards make their appearance for the first time on the album, adding to the oppressive atmosphere of the song - Ihsahn is happy, but no innovator.
"Immortal Cessation" is ritualistic black metal of the purest kind, the very style which would be appropriated by Von and early Gorgoroth, and go on to influence Immortal (debut excluded).
"Profanation" is the most violent songs on the album. It rips - and this is no exaggeration, rips - at a blistering 220 BPM, dissonant tremolo riffing at full display.
Then come the two final dirges to end the album, descending into the darkest depths of brutality, layered with multi-tracked growls straight from the pits of Hell.
This disgustingly evil album is a classic of the genre - "Onward to Golgotha" is brilliant, and a truly unique experience.
Onward to Golgotha score: 100/100.
Support the Underground
