Incantation - Unholy Deification (Death Metal)

Incantation's Unholy Deification feels like a tired recycling of their old riffs, stretched into painfully dull heavy, speed, and doom metal tracks. This is the sound of a once-legendary band sinking to the level of the copycat "caverncore" bands — yes, I'm talking about you, Asphyx, Ulcerate, Kraanium, and Khranial — that you'd typically find on a Dark Descent Records sampler. The tracks here are packed with riffs that feel like a weak echo of what they've done before on albums like Onward to Golgotha or Diabolical Conquest. In some cases, they even recycle their own riffs as hooks, much like a pop band would, except instead of a catchy chorus, we get a half-hearted finger exercise that you'd expect from someone mindlessly noodling on their guitar during practice.

There's no real attempt at riff variation or phrasing here. The droning repetition is so extreme it could lull you into a coma. They've even dropped the speed metal song structures and phrasing that made Profane Nexus somewhat interesting. Instead, Unholy Deification applies a stripped-down, almost primitive version of Swedeath aka speed metal riffing to boring heavy and doom metal. You know that punchy rhythm riff you'd expect in speed metal, like a nice triplet? Well, here it's flattened into something almost unbearably monotonous. And the fills—usually where the excitement should come from—are just bland, directionless chords pretending to be part of some extended melody. Spoiler alert: they're not.

So, why does Unholy Deification even exist? It feels like a half-baked excuse to remind people that Incantation once made three great albums and an EP, The Forsaken Mourning of Angelic Anguish. It's more of a ploy to get some touring gigs than a serious album. The only thing that even makes this recognizably an Incantation record is the recycled hooks pulled from much better tracks, now thrown into uninspired, washed-out Swedish "melodeath" speed metal structures. Honestly, this is the same formula that led to the glam and hard rock sellouts of the '80s. When Khranial — yes, Khranial — can make Incantation look bad, you know there's a problem. Getting owned by your own imitators? Is that poetic justice or just epic fail?

Gone is the ambitious tremolo riffing and explosive chromatic compositions that made Onward to Golgotha so iconic. In Unholy Deification, Incantation doesn't even try to create something engaging or original. Instead, they just rehash old ideas with none of the passion or creativity that once defined them.

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