Blood Incantation

Blood Incantation formed in Denver, Colorado in 2011, and by their 2016 debut *Starspawn* had already bent the genre's expectations — tectonic riffs and cavernous vocals sharing space with melodic, almost hallucinatory passages that had critics reaching for words like "psychedelic death metal" and finding them insufficient. The four-piece — Paul Riedl on guitar and vocals, Morris Kolontyrsky on guitar, Jeff Barrett on fretless bass, and Isaac Faulk on drums — grew stranger and more precise with each record. Their 2024 album *Absolute Elsewhere*, recorded at Berlin's Hansa Tonstudio, earned a 92/100 on Metacritic and landed as one of the year's most critically lauded releases across any genre. Krautrock, space rock, and progressive music have worked their way into the formula without softening the death metal underneath.