Blood Incantation -Timewave Zero (2022)

Timewave Zero was met with an understandably divisive reaction as it went on to more fully explore Blood Incantation's ambient influences, which to this point had only been manifest in parts of a few instrumentals or interludes on their albums. To an extent, I can sympathize with the naysayers...the logo is the same, and it's such a massive shift that it might as well be another band entirely, but it's not as if this was the first time in history some extreme metal acts took 180 turns. Hell, look at Beherit or Burzum, or many others who embarked on ambient or electronic or dungeon synth paths away from the blasting and growling. I'm all for bands evolving, in fact some of my favorites like Enslaved or Voivod have made careers of it, but this could certainly be seen as a bridge too far...

Fortunately, Timewave Zero is quite good. 2-3 epic length ambient tracks, (depending on which version you've acquired), moody and mesmerizing, and at the very least, featuring contributions from all the death metal band members. So even though this might come off as a vanity project that extends the earlier hints of this style, it's all hands on deck as they surf further along the radiance of quasars and emptiness of the vacuum between worlds. The textures are obvious but also subtle, with a couple different synth-lines layered together, some repetitious and others more celestial and spacious, but it's mostly quite smoothed-over, you don't get into the abrasive droning or noisy sounds that a lot of darker ambient projects explore, at least not in "Io" or "Ea". As most you feel the atmosphere of alien worlds through a few sweltering crescendos of what might feel like colossal elder beings stretching their galaxy-wide limb, or really a cinematic feel that will trigger nostalgia for old sci fi films in which the synthesizer-based composers really earned their scratch.

There's also a little touch of acoustic guitar deep into the experience which is a nice bridge back to the familiar, and this is perhaps my favorite part, when the little synths play off against this. If you've got the version with "Chronophagia", this is a much darker, improvised and longer tune where a lot of those more droning aspects come into effect, with some moody synth lines out in the astral murk that really impress as another of the highlight. My CD copy does not have this track and it kind of pisses me off, I didn't do my research but I HIGHLY recommend you get that version with the CD + Blu Ray or the multiple records, because it definitely adds a lot of value to the release and then it really becomes more of a full-length than an EP as the band states.

Now, admittedly I don't have a ton of knowledge when it comes to this genre...I do have hundreds of ambient, dark ambient, New Age, dungeon synth, space synth and other releases digitally, and also a bunch in physical form. I love the stuff. I dig my Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze, Jean-Michael Jarre, Fenriz' Neptune Towers, and many more, but I don't know that I can precisely pinpoint the influences that Riedl and company most lean on for this. But it's clearly fluent in that spacey style, immersive and just as easy to get lost in as any of their death metal material, though I think this is obviously a lot simpler and probably easier to put together. I think it would work better as a spin-off, or perhaps integrated into their heavier side, but ultimately what matters is the quality of what's on the disc, and this is enjoyable if not revolutionary for its style.

Verdict: Win [8/10]

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