Incantation - Diabolical Conquest
Review: Industrial neoclassical metallists Incantation use modal stripes in counterpoint composition of music that without tell-tale harmonization to give away its construction, founds its design in melodic songwriting that expands themes around the roaring inferno of motion created by initial motivic impressions on the memory of expectation. In a method similar to that of ex-alma mater Havohej, the band with this album move toward matching conception with vision as they approach the sublimated fears of everyday existence in demonic and alienated view of the abyss as captured in streams of power chords balancing modal expectations chiastically in a counterpoint system. Abrupt and battering rhythms pass forward momentum to an contexture of precision drumming and hummingbird-strummed phrases of rising power chord attack.
In these songs the dominant voice is one of melodic composition, even when suppressing melodicity through overuse of chromatic and intervals, as all phrases serve melodic purpose in compositional structure although not necessarily aesthetic, although that might be considered a neoclassical take on ultra-nihilist music with a structuralist underpinning. Gravel-throated hellbeast vocals channel alternatingly doomy, epic and absurdist riff combinations which like those of progenitor Ledney (Havohej) emphasize the disturbed in the context of massive reductionism which levels elements of each idea at the whole to emphasize its essential paradox (attraction) and continuity (resolution).
1. Impending Diabolical Conquest
2. Desecration (of the Heavenly Graceful) 
3. Disciples of Blasphemous Reprisal
4. Unheavenly Skies
5. United in Repugnance
6. Shadows of the Ancient Empire
7. Ethereal Misery
8. Unto Infinite Twilight/Majesty of Infernal Damnation
Notable for the band is advancement into harmonic texturing within songs and melodic composition with matching aesthetic as a method for interlude, connecting or severing consistency within threads of song to change texture and the bases upon which it will recontextualize. A familiar roaring voice from Daniel Corchado of Cenotaph sears the awkward groove this band make graceful and pushes forward with strength, to be answered in modulated matching cadences by strings and percussion. The disparate nature of patterns to this work and the similarity of appearance in which they are eventually stated hides the motivic and lyrical concept to this band which is continually unfolding in an information space within subtle changes of harmonic shape. While its aspect is one of the more extreme short of the ludicrous, its compositional design encodes an elegant and literal logic.