ABSOLUTE ELSETOUR - EUROPE 2026

Presented by: Cobra Agency

INTRODUCTION. PAUL RIEDL ON ABSOLUTE ELSEWHERE: "Our most powerful sonic extract/musical trip yet; like the soundtrack to a Herzog-esque sci-fi epic about history/the battle for human consciousness itself, via a 70's prog album played by a 90's death metal band from the future."

Blood Incantations Absolute Elsewhere is unlike anything you've ever heard before. Yes, that's a bold, possibly overstated claim, but few can claim a sonic watershed as readily as this Denver, Colorado quartet. With a running time of nearly 45 minutes - their longest recording to date - the two sprawling but challenging compositions that make up this album are as disorienting as they are captivating. It's a musical architecture at odds with itself: a speeding through a Kubrickian Stargate into a realm of sonic ideas in harmonic dichotomy, uniting unlikely binaries of sonic heavens and hells. For inspiration, the group looked to the mid-70s progressive rock collective Absolute Elsewhere (best known as a celestial stopover for King Crimson drummer Bill Bruford) for the album's namesake. For the uninitiated, Absolute Elsewhere's seminal 1976 album, In Search of Ancient Gods, was compiled as a musical accompaniment to the works of Chariots of the Gods author Erich Von Däniken and his theories on non-earthly humanoid suggestions for the evolution of mankind. The subject matter should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with Blood Incantation's previous LPs and cosmically philosophical leanings. But make no mistake: the four musicians who have worked under the BI banner for the past decade - guitarist and vocalist Paul Riedl, drummer Isaac Faulk, guitarist Morris Kolontyrsky and bassist Jeff Barrett - have successfully left the microgravity of the genre behind and are rewriting the Rosetta Stone of extreme music with an entirely new language.

EVOLUTION. THE BEGINNING OF A NEW GENRE.

The analog tape induced star maps that have documented Blood Incantation's journey thus far are collisions of future and past histories: Anno 2011, torn science fiction paperbacks, psychedelic future shocks, and theoretical cosmic hypotheses that combine with a love for the extreme atmospheres and possibilities of outsider death metal. Sumerian creation myths infused with the spirit of 70s progressive rock to generate creative ignition, which manifested itself in the form of 2015's demo EP Interdimensional Extinction , itself recorded in 2013. From there, Blood Incantation unleashed the scene-stealing Starspawn (2016) before traveling across musical realms on a three-year tour around the globe, finally reaching the milestone of Hidden History of the Human Race (2019) ... Along the way, four monumental, bookish surveys of sonic intellect crystallized their course, delivering hieroglyphically hewn star charts pointing to new destinations and revealing a distinctive variant of death metal at its most progressive, philosophical and transcendental.

BEYOND THE RED EVENT HORIZON.

Always progressing, Blood Incantation expanded the collective consciousness of the scene with their love for the continuum from 1973 to 1993: they delved deeper into the realms of prog and krautrock with the wordless, cinematic and pulsating Timewave Zero EP (2022). An exploration that further illuminates the shared musical space between precursors like Popol Vuh and where Conrad Schnitzler of Tangerine Dream met Euronymous in the intro to Mayhem's "Deathcrush". An unexpected, if mercilessly canonical homage to cosmic music/ambient/krautrock through the ominous and atmospheric BI lens, Timewave Zero gave Blood Incantation not only the freedom to explore eternally deeper horizons, but also proved why they were far more than just skillful death mediators on a Decibel tour with Cannibal Corpse. Demonstrations like BIsAll-Synth's February 26, 2022 show in Denver, CO, or their performance at Roadburn Festival 2024, where they played back-to-back death metal and ambient explorations, made it clear: Blood Incantation have honed their ability to boldly go where few bands have gone before, and show no signs of slowing down.

ACCELERATION.

Moving into the acclaimed Hansa Studios in Berlin, Germany in the summer of 2023 with wünderkid producer Arthur Rizk (Power Trip, Spectral Voice, Kreator, Wayfarer, Sumerlands, etc.) was not only a choice for Blood Incantation, but an absolute necessity. To capture the many twisting turns, celestial psychedelia and absolute extremity of Absolute Elsewhere , Blood Incantation turned to the legendary pre-Weimar recording complex where many of their most progressive influences - including Tangerine Dream, Eloy and Brian Eno - came together to create classic albums. Unmistakably, Hansa and Berlin became part of the underlying atmospheric character of the album. The city's rich history as an epicenter of the countercultural spirit permeated the sessions and brought forth the unyielding eclecticism that rests resolutely at the core of Absolute Elsewhere. The sessions revealed that the band was so creatively connected that they played through the entire monumental B-side suite "The Message" from start to finish. The album itself, wrapped in artwork by iconic sci-fi/fantasy painter Steve R. Dodd, illuminates their innate message and spirit more clearly than ever: they contemplate the mystery of the flesh, the human spirit, and the hidden history of nature and universal creation. For simply put, we as a species are the blood incantation.

THE MUSIC. COMMUNICATION FROM STARGATE RESEARCH SOCIETY.

PAUL RIEDL: "It's about consciousness. The album feels like a soundtrack to a movie about the battle of consciousness and the war on human consciousness and love and acceptance and peace and all these things that spring from heightened states of consciousness and the expansion of our consciousness. It's an inherently psychedelic album, but it's also mystical; it's progressive, abstract and beautiful, but also quite aggressive; it has a human playfulness to it. It's a very personal album, so transparent in our ambitions. You can hear all of our individual personalities coming out of it more than ever. Ultimately, it's a very positive album."

PAGE ONE. "THE STARGATE" (20.20): Composed by Faulk with contributions from Riedl, Kolontyrsky and Barrett. Arranged and performed by Blood Incantation.

A violent storm evokes the familiar before a grand cosmic key turn for a touch of expansive scope with spiritual recognition and accompaniment by Tangerine Dream's Thorsten Quaeschning on synthesizers on the song's second tablet. Musically as violent as it is mediative, with subtle, spoken passages flickering back and forth between Nicklas Malmqvist's (Hällas) intense synth keys and Mellotron strings that evoke both the modern and the ancient, and all brought sharply into focus by Artur Rizk's powerfully dynamic and encompassing mix. Blood Incantation leave the traditionally dated middle ground of extreme metal and move towards "Genre of One" status, while "The Stargate" intones the disembodiment of consciousness itself, hurtling through the Stargate to Samsara-like rebirth, punctuated by occasional growls from Sijjin/Ex-Necros Christos main man Mors Dalos Ra (Malte Gericke).

PAGE TWO. "The Message" (23:23) Composed by Riedl and Kolontyrski, with contributions by Faulk and Barrett. Arranged and performed by Blood Incantation.

A step through doors of otherworldly beauty, playfulness, strangeness and horror. David Gilmour jams alongside Chick Corea and Trey Azagthoth, melting together through psychedelic hyperspace, evoking mystical vibes and a palpable metaphysical transcendence. Dalos briefly reunites with this track in his native tongue, along with star rider Nicklas Malmqvist, whose iconic synth/key work throughout the album adds to the otherworldly atmosphere that defines a new musical era for Blood Incantation with Absolute Elsewhere , as well as for 21st century metal itself.

Truly, Absolute Elsewhere is the sound of the starborn.