“Radiophobia” by Cytotoxin is a true classic when it comes to more technical brutal death metal, and with their new album Nuklearth just over 1 month away from release, its worth it to visit this classic.
Album Review by Bradley Christensen
Incantation – Onward To Golgotha
Record Label: Relapse
Release Date: May 5 1992
I’ve spoken about death-doom a few times here, which is the sub-sub-genre of death metal that has a doom metal influence within it, so the riffs are more prominent, and the overall tone is a bit slower, more meandering, and slow-moving. That’ll work wonders for you if you love doom metal, or slower-paced metal, or you’ll hate it, especially if you want brutal, fast, and energetic stuff. I mean, I’m on the fence about that, because I don’t mind doom metal at all, but I love death metal, and I love how energetic and chaotic it is, so the idea of doom metal being integrated has always been odd. I’ve listened to a few albums with a death-doom sound to it, the most recent being the newest album from Hooded Menace, Ossuarium Silhouettes Unhallowed, and they were pretty cool. I didn’t love that album, specifically, because it was a bit too slow-moving for my tastes, but at the same time, it’s cool to hear that combination. What I wanted, at least from death-doom, is I wanted a good balance between the death and the doom. That’s where New York-based band Incantation comes into play, because I picked up their debut LP, 1992’s Onward To Golgotha, a long while ago, but I haven’t talked about it until now. I picked it up late last year, but I never got a chance to get into it, because I got a lot of other stuff at the time, so I decided to wait to review it. I might have talked about it, but I don’t remember if I did, honestly. I wanted to talk about it now, just because I’ve been listening to this album a bit more, since I’ve been getting back into 90s death metal, and I have to say that I really like it. This is a good example of a death-doom album that works really well for me. Incantation is one of the forefathers of death-doom, along with Obituary and Amorphis, but Incantation is also one of the oldest death metal bands.
Despite their debut LP coming out in 1992, they’ve been around since 1989. Next year will mark thirty years for them as a band, and they’re still around today. They released their last album just a year ago, I believe, so that’s awesome. When I first heard Onward To Golgotha, I wasn’t too crazy about it, because it was a bit slow-moving for my tastes, but getting more into doom metal during December of last year, give or take, I found an appreciation for it. One that I didn’t have beforehand, anyway, so I was able to get into that stuff a bit more. I’m still not a super huge fan of doom, but that’s just because I like more energy in my music, especially when doom metal albums are around an hour a piece, so that can feel very exhausting. I like my doom metal short, sweet, and to the point, even though that’s not what a lot of doom metal does. Regardless, listening to Onward To Golgotha again has been a great experience, because this album gets that balance right. This album is both brutal but slow-moving at the same time. It’s not that it leans on either sound, at least in the sense of being more doom than death, because Hooded Menace was more of a doom metal band, but Incantation is definitely a death metal band. I can’t say that they’re a death metal band with some doom metal elements, though. I mean, if you want to label them as basic as possible, yeah, they’re a death metal band, but if you wanted to be more specific, I’d go with death-doom. They put effort into both sounds and aspects of their sound, so it works quite well, frankly. This album’s a little long, at around 45 minutes, but the album never becomes too “doom-y,” I guess you could say, where the riffs feel very stagnant or boring, and the album never becomes a monotonous 90s death metal album, either, so there’s a great middle ground here that the band very much exhibits nicely.
This is the kind of death-doom album that I’ve wanted to hear, because there’s still a lot of brutality behind this album, but it’s masked in a doom metal sound, too, so there’s something more there. It’s just not your average 90s death metal album, and in the case of a lot of 90s death metal bands, they carved their own sound and lane within the genre. Incantation is more of a death-doom band, Immolation has dual guitarists, Morbid Angel (and also Deicide, too, since they are very similar) had elements of the occult and anti-religion in their sound, Suffocation had elements of grindcore and tech-death, as well as many other bands carving their own niche in death metal. Incantation was one of the first death-doom bands, and it’s really interesting to hear their debut album. I heard their last album wasn’t really all that good, or at the very least, it was just another Incantation album, but that’s okay, because it happens. I almost feel like this LP is “required listening,” kind of like how I said that Cryptopsy’s None So Vile was, just because of how it was really influential to tech-death. This one, however, is very influential to death-doom, and without this album, we might not have had that style of music in the same way that we do now. If you’re a death metal, or you’re into 90s death metal, I’d give this album a listen, because it’s something a bit different and unique than what other death metal bands were doing, and what bands are still doing today, because you don’t really hear a lot of death metal bands like this today. Onward To Golgotha is a perfect example of how the balance can be really good and well-done. This album’s not doom-y to the point of being meandering, boring, or slow-moving, but it’s also got enough of that doom edge to where it’s just not your average death metal album. The brutality and energy of death metal is still there, though, and I love this album for that. This is an album that I’d certainly recommend to death metal fans, young and old.
