THE INCANTUS

THE INCANTUS     “The Incantus”

By Dr. Abner Mality

Something promising from Australia here! You can tell pretty early on that THE INCANTUS have put a lot of thought into their self-titled debut...a story is being told and all songs contribute to it. Exactly what kind of band is THE INCANTUS, though?

It’s a jigsaw puzzle of various sounds and influences, but there’s a core of dark melody to all of it. Classic melodic death metal like early IN FLAMES and DARK TRANQUILITY, a touch of English doom, some melodic black metal ala DISSECTION and even classic metal all get a look in. There’s a certain nod to gloomy bands like INSOMNIUM and AMORPHIS as well. But all in all, this is an aggressive album.

After a moody start with strange narration and a doomy vibe, we hit the meat of the album with “Sidhe of the Barrows”, which is a rager with harsh, crackly vocals. They stay with these harsh tones throughout, which surprised me, because THE INCANTUS seems to be the type of band where clean vocals are in play. The album’s a good mix of blazing, well thought out melodic death like “Protraction of Night” and “They Wait For Me” with longer, more doom oriented tunes like “From Where I Hold The Sky” and “Wintersmith”. The best track here, “Goddess Ablaze”, is a combination of both styles that sounds smooth and majestic.

There are times when the guitar production sounds kind of overheated, resulting in an unpleasant sound. It doesn’t ruin the album, but it does kind of hold it down. Performances are uniformly good and the drums in particular are booming. All in all, you get the impression that THE INCANTUS worked on this for quite a while and the result is a worthy debut album.

THE INCANTUS