Blood Incantation brought prog-laden metal to the Granada on Tuesday night

July 24, 2025

Nick Spacek,

Blood Incantation. // photo by Nick Spacek

Blood Incantation
with Krallice
The Granada
Tuesday, July 22

Psychedelic progressive metal is a hard sell, you’d think, especially on a summer Tuesday, but by the end of opener Krallice’s first song, the place was packed. Yes, granted, that song was lengthy, as were many of the tracks played the other night, but the fact remains: Blood Incantation put out one of the best metal albums of last year in Absolute Elsewhere and goddamn if Krallice’s Inorganic Rites wasn’t right up there, and getting to see that shit live is worth staying up late on a school night.

Twin obelisks flanked each side of the stage and, really, is there any more perfect image to bridge prog and metal than wild stage sets? It’s not quite an Iron Maiden set, obviously, but nothing says “let’s get weird” than adding 12-foot high Egyptian-style faux stonework, especially one with runes (sigils?) which light up. Coming out to the pounding sounds of Kraftwerk’s “Pocket Calculator” after some weird proggy Italian song which sounded like Goblin with poorly-translated vocals kinda set the mood perfectly, is what I’m saying. Soundchecking with the riff from “Sweet Leaf” was dope as fuck, too.

Blood Incantation played all of Absolute Elsewhere, and that means there were two songs, each with three movements and equal to an entire LP side. It looked at Rush’s 2112, said, “Bet,” and went even further. They literally asked the audience to flip the record for them between “Stargate” and “The Message,” and made sure to tell everyone to be careful they didn’t get their fingers on the grooves. These are nerds. We are nerds. It was amazing.

Blood Incantation. // photo by Nick Spacek

With a set like this, you get taken on a ride which encompasses everything from mid-’70s Animals-era Pink Floyd mixed with Roky Erickson deep cuts and black metal’s greatest vocal stylings. It’s like taking a deep dive into someone’s record collection where they drop a riff from one album after the drum fill from another, without ever bothering to lift the needle as a keyboard part goes on from another. Yet, it works. Blood Incantation flows from one segment to another. It’s never choppy nor awkward nor lurching. The music is just moving back and forth along a continuum – sometimes fast, sometimes gradually, and yet always within that continuum, wide-reaching though it may be.

I would like to continue to go on the record as saying that between-band changeovers which push the half hour mark and beyond are a surefire way to really kill the vibe. It’s great money for the merch table and the bar, but my excitement can only wax and wane so much before I’m impatiently looking at the time every 30 seconds. Having to put in my earplugs as a precaution against whatever insanely loud low end was pumping from the sound system for nearly ten minutes did not help, either. Love a show where the synths kick you in the teeth just as hard as the kick drum. Like, my fillings were literally vibrating.

Krallice. // photo by Nick Spacek

Queens’ Krallice blends prog with black metal and it’s that willingness to open up space and get weird with shit that’s made metal so interesting the last few years. Blending folk with black metal? Myrkyur. Shoegaze? Alcest or Deafheaven. It’s a real field day, and adding full-bore, not-quite-Rick-Wakeman-but-close synths and keys is a master stroke. The vocals might be a little less polished than the studio recordings, but hearing “Parataxis” live is worth a little grit in the gears. The band was dialed in otherwise, and despite a lengthy opening intro which crept in quietly, the crowd was locked in and listening intently from the get-go.

All photos by Nick Spacek

Blood Incantation