Where do you even start when it comes to Incantation? I think I cite them as an influence just about every time I write about a death metal band. It's almost always an applicable comparison, even when discussing bands as disparate as Fuming Mouth and Caustic Wound. Any band, metal or otherwise, who take inspiration from that low-register, grit and grind and conflagration of early '90s death metal, invariably owes some seed of inspiration at the root of their gangrenous stentorian storm to the vault of discontent that is Incantation's imposing position within the world of heavy music. Frankly, they don't need me to write about them. They don't need anyone to write about them. They are as a force of nature. A cosmic wind that sweeps through the euclidian world, causing planets to rotate counter to their axis and the winds to plunge howling into the sea. So why am I writing this review? You may as well as me why my heart beats.
Sect of Vile Divinities is the eleventh studio album from Incantation and follows their 2017 album Profane Nexus. Their previous album was somewhat derided for its cleaner, less-saturated production quality. If that was a deal-breaker for you, then consider Vile Divinities to be the band's heinous counter-offer. Most tracks are named after a different foul, an unearthly being, giving the entire album a sort of bestiary of malign demiurges quality that would characterize a book on demonology. The entire affair is a testament to those destined to unmake the human world. On this note, the morose churn of "Propitiation" is a good place to start, as its oppressive atmosphere is instructive as to the deference you need to show before the old returning gods if you want to evade being ground under their indifferent tred. Groveling is no guarantee of survival, though, and your cue to start running comes on tracks like the all swallowing flame of "Black Fathom's Fire," as well as later, on the toothy, fate-sealing, flesh pulverizer "Fury's Manifesto." Amongst the most old-school cuts served up on this album are the guttural, anthropomancy practicing, splatter-riff spill of "Entrails of the Hag Queen" and the pungent, drop-riff, pounce of "Chant of Formless Dread", which reaks of dead air escaping from between the rotten teeth, a recently revived, deathless nightmare.
Sect of Vile Divinities is all the evidence one needs to be convinced of Incantation's mystic-malevolence and capacity to summon an impious, all-consuming ire. If you are not on your knees now, you will be once they cut your legs out from beneath you.
