All Gates Open is the accompanying soundtrack to Blood Incantation’s forthcoming documentary charting the genesis of their massive 2024 album, Absolute Elesewhere.

ALL GATES OPEN

If you have been following Blood Incantation’s journey over the last few years, you will already know that they are not a band content to stay in one lane. Starspawn and Hidden History of the Human Race established them as one of the most exciting forces in modern death metal – and then Timewave Zero arrived in 2022 and threw the rulebook straight out of the window. That album ditched the riffs entirely in favour of a completely ambient, Berlin School-influenced journey, and to say it polarised people would be putting it mildly. But Blood Incantation has never been interested in what people expect from them, and All Gates Open (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) is yet further proof of that.

Originally bundled exclusively inside the deluxe artbook edition of their 2024 fourth studio album Absolute Elsewhere, the soundtrack now gets its first standalone release via Century Media alongside the 73-minute documentary it accompanies. That film, directed by Niklas Tschaikowsky and Tammo Dehn, takes you inside the legendary Hansa Tonstudios in Berlin, where the band spent the summer of 2023 recording what would become Absolute Elsewhere. The list of artists who have worked at Hansa reads like a museum tour – David Bowie, Iggy Pop, Depeche Mode, U2, Nick Cave, Siouxsie and the Banshees, and crucially for Blood Incantation, Tangerine Dream. The film features appearances from members of Hällas, Sijjin, and Tangerine Dream themselves, and from what is available, it is a genuinely immersive, unhurried piece of documentary filmmaking rather than a glossy promo package.

NOT A FOLLOW UP

Here is the crucial thing to understand before pressing play: guitarist and vocalist Paul Riedl has been very clear that this is not the follow-up to Absolute Elsewhere. The four tracks here were actually composed in 2021, before those Berlin sessions even happened. “The soundtrack captures the very first seed of what led to Absolute Elsewhere,” Riedl has said. “This is where that era started.” So, what you are getting is not a companion piece so much as an origin story – the embryonic ideas that would eventually grow into the band’s most ambitious work. Mixed and mastered by Arthur Rizk, with suitably retro-futuristic analogue collage artwork from Jodie Day, the presentation alone tells you this has been treated as a full artistic statement rather than an archival footnote.

Twenty minutes and forty-seven seconds is a bold way to open any record, and Blood Incantation does not ease you in gently. Balance arrives quietly – layers of synthesiser building a slow, meditative atmosphere that draws heavily from the Berlin School tradition the band has clearly absorbed whole. There is something about the way it develops that feels genuinely patient; it does not rush toward anything, and that restraint ends up being the point.

The cosmic, weightless quality to the synth work here brings to mind the long-form explorations of Cluster and Harmonia – that feeling of sound existing in space rather than moving through it. Where Timewave Zero could tip into something heavier and more unsettling, Balance has a warmth running underneath it. There is still a melancholic undercurrent, a sense of something being processed or mourned, but it never tips into the bleak. It is a remarkable piece of music to sit with, and it rewards the time investment.

TAKING FLIGHT

If Balance is contemplative and earthbound, Flight is exactly what the title promises. This is the track on the record that I found myself returning to most, and I think it is simply the most affecting piece of music Blood Incantation has committed to tape in their entire career, which is a statement I do not make lightly, given what they have already achieved in the metal space. There is a lightness to it that feels hard-won rather than easy; this is not background music. The synthesiser work drifts toward a late-70s progressive electronic sensibility, the sort of shimmering, layered ambience that makes you feel like the ceiling has been removed from the room you are sitting in.

At its most expansive, there is genuine emotional uplift here, and equally, there are moments that carry a bittersweet quality – that particular feeling of leaving something behind even as you move toward something new. I would urge you not to put this one on while doing anything else.

Coming in at under six minutes, Dawn is a short breath between the two monolithic pieces that bookend it, and it is all the better for knowing its role. Acoustic elements move to the front here, giving the track a warmth and intimacy that the synth-heavy tracks around it do not have. It has the quality of a reset button – a moment of clarity after forty minutes of deep immersion. Some might feel that its brevity makes it feel slight by comparison, but I think that would be a misreading of what it is doing. ‘Dawn’ is exactly the right length, and it provides the transition into the closing piece with a naturalness that serves the album’s overall flow really well.

TEXTURALLY FOCUSED

The closing track brings the record home in understated fashion. At nearly fourteen minutes, Rain has more textural focus than the two opening giants, and it settles into a groove of slow-shifting atmosphere that feels genuinely meditative rather than directionless. It does not try to top what came before – and that is the right call. Instead, it provides a kind of denouement, a quiet space in which everything that has come before can settle. If Flight is the emotional peak of the record, Rain is the long exhale afterwards. It is also proof that Blood Incantation understands pacing as well as any band working in this space right now. The album ends without fanfare, and that feels completely right.

There is a temptation with a release like this to file it under “interesting curiosity” and move on. I would push back firmly on that instinct. All Gates Open (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) is a fully realised, deeply considered piece of work that stands entirely on its own terms. Yes, it exists in the context of Absolute Elsewhere and the creative evolution Blood Incantation has been on since Timewave Zero – but it does not require that context to justify its existence.

EMOTIONALLY DIRECT

This is sixty minutes of genuinely compelling ambient music made by a band who have taken the time to properly understand the tradition they are working within, and who have brought their own voice to it rather than simply paying homage. Is it going to satisfy the listener who primarily wants the riffs and the growls? Probably not – and that is fine. But if you have ever found yourself drawn to the more expansive, experimental side of what this band does, All Gates Open is an essential listen. For my money, it is the most emotionally direct thing they have ever released.

You can view All Gates Open in London at The Social. Tickets are available here.

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