Blood Incantation, matching boundless musical ambition and creativity with intense full-on metal, touchdown in Glasgow to bring their Absolute Elsetour to the masses. Oranssi Pazuzu & Sijjin are in support.
Words by Gareth Allen from Glasgow, 9th October 2025
Photos by Dominic Walsh from Manchester, 8th October 2025.
THE VENUE
It’s an autumn evening in Glasgow, and metalheads are streaming up Sauchiehall Street towards The Garage venue. A venue of choice in Glasgow for many touring metal bands, it has the very quirky feature of the front half of a yellow truck embedded over the entrance.
The venue security and staff are always friendly, and the sound within the main concert hall, reached by a steeply ascending set of stairs, is often remarkably good. The venue has been sold out for some time for Blood Incantation’s show, a sign of the sizeable and loyal following the band has developed over their 14 or so years of existence. Interestingly, the band seem to indicate from the stage, that this is their first ever show in Scotland. From the response to the show from the Glasgow audience this evening, it surely won’t be their last.
SIJJIN
The international support for the tour tonight is Sijjin from Germany/Spain and Oranssi Pazuzu from Finland. Sijjin unleash a torrent of thrash metal like frenzy, during an always engaging set, with bassist and vocalist Malte Gericke wearing an Overkill t-shirt. Bringing together some fine musicianship with hints of a turbocharged Motörhead and Southern rock swagger, they deservedly go down well with the audience, which gradually built in numbers during their set.
ORANSSI PAZUZU
Oranssi Pazuzu come on stage to a scarily eerie intro tape, with the stage completely bathed in blue. The concert hall is now almost full to capacity. How to describe their music? Imagine, if you can, the musical soundtrack to your worst nightmare! There you have it… and they are completely brilliant!
Within this five piece, three of the band members at different points in the set play keyboards. So, it is fair to assume that the sound is completely live with no tapes. This is quite remarkable as the music they create has the intensity and layers of a full orchestra, combining black metal, industrial funk, and space rock electronics, in an incredible cacophony of sounds.
There is a strange beauty to their sound, and the underpinning rhythmic patterns are demandingly hypnotic. At times it felt like Watain, early Pink Floyd, and Hawkwind, were all on the stage engaging in a demonic jam session. A sensational and brutal set that receives a tumultuous reception from the audience.
BLOOD INCANTATION
So, the scene is set for Blood Incantation. The stage is flanked on either side by towering columns, carved with symbols, which light up in orange. A large gong sits behind Isaac Faulk’s double bass drum kit. The band are playing their most recent album, Absolute Elsewhere, from start to finish. An ambitious album that consists of two lengthy pieces of continuous music, each a suite divided into three movements. These elements of the show pleasingly resonate of the classic progressive rock bands of the 1970s. Blood Incantation do something very special with this progressive rock lineage, setting it within a brutal death and black metal context, that is both high energy and thrilling.
For this tour, the four regular members of the band are joined by a fifth member on keyboards and backing vocals, we think one John Gamiño. A very necessary addition, given the prominence of synthesizers and other keyboards on Absolute Elsewhere.
THE STARGATE
The band launch into The Stargate, from Absolute Elsewhere, against a backdrop of disembodied voices, and lights shooting upwards over the audience from the front of the stage. From a thundering death metal beginning, the opening movement of Tablet I, segued into a wash of keyboards and a soaring synthesizer refrain. The guitar solo determinedly snakes around the contours of the music. Raised devil horns from the stage signal a dash into a towering black metal wall of music, with squalling guitars scything through the layers of sound. Isaac Faulk standing up from behind his kit, still crashing cymbals around his kit, signals the shift into Tablet II.
This movement, which on the record itself features Tangerine Dream’s Thorsten Quaeschning, is a melee of swirling synthesizers interrupted by a rolling guitar figure and jazz influenced drum accents. It is a very striking other worldly musical section. The heavier transition and change of time signature into an onslaught of death metal riffing, that begins Tablet III, couldn’t be in starker contrast, and is completely breathtaking. While it is perhaps the most traditionally metal movement of The Stargate, there are some nice touches, such as the ascending mellotron sections, and the at times post punk ambience.
THE MESSAGE
The band pause everything, for guitarist and vocalist Paul Riedl, to cheekily suggest that we metaphorically turn over the vinyl record, to hear side two and The Message.
The first movement (Tablet I) features Paul Riedl and Morris Kolontyrsky’s guitars switching back and forward between melodic chiming sounds and an impenetrable swathe of pulverising sound. The waves of sound dart out from the stage accompanied by repeating pinch harmonics. The emerging circle pit in the audience seems to almost impossibly carve out a space within the packed audience.
Tablet II is where things get really adventurous, with Blood Incantation leaning into a funk driven riff that is pure jazz fusion. Then with absolute precision, shifting the music into Pink Floyd territory, where the swirling organ, crashing guitars, spacey rhythms and clean vocal, fire up the imagination to thinking momentarily it could be the Floyd on stage.
Tablet III throws the audience into unforgiving technical death metal, before offering some respite with flute sounding keyboards and medieval like choral voices. What follows is some of the most intense metal sounds you will likely encounter in a live setting. Crescendos of sound build to an incredible and unrelenting intensity. When Paul Riedl asks, “Glasgow are you ready, because here we go”, the music the band release could literally almost knock you over, as all the instruments fight to be heard.
THE BACK CATALOGUE
With Absolute Elsewhere completed, it’s time to take a very deep breath of recovery, as the band delve into their back catalogue to conclude the show. From their second studio album, Hidden History of the Human Race (my introduction to the band), Blood Incantation dig out The Giza Power Plant. It has a remarkable slower middle section with some anthemic guitar playing and Jeff Barrett’s deep rumbling bass guitar work. Going back even further, we are treated to The Vth Tablet (Of Enûma Eliš) from the debut Interdimensional Extinction EP. Its ferocious more straight-ahead metal shows the musical journey the band have been on to reach the musical pinnacle of Absolute Elsewhere.
THE ENCORES
The encores are Meticulous Soul Devourment and Obliquity of the Ecliptic. The former surprisingly features country music styled guitar picking set against some windswept electronics. Strangely, and quite wonderfully, it works as the preamble to the concert coda of Obliquity of the Ecliptic, with its breakdown hammering riffs, which of course lead to the circle pit erupting again, and the appearance of the crowd surfers. Obliquity of the Ecliptic then hits a change of pace with some beautiful guitar phrases overlayed with a haltering synthesizer exchange, before a final full-on metal charge.
A magnificent show, where Blood Incantation demonstrate their ability to match boundless musical ambition and creativity with the intense physical impact of full-on metal. The complete play through of Absolute Elsewhere was peerless and quite simply a musical triumph. Another landmark then in this impressive band’s development.
Blood Incantation: Website / Instagram / Facebook
Keep up with At The Barrier: Facebook / X / Instagram / Spotify / YouTube