BLOOD INCANTATION und INSECT ARK live in der Pumpe, Kiel (02. Juni 2026)

Déjà Vu? Blood Incantation spielen "Absolute Elsewhere" live - hatten wir das nicht schon vor etwas mehr als einem Jahr in Hamburg? Ja, hatten wir. Aber aktuell spielt die Kosmische Death Metal-Band diverse Sommerfestivals in Europa, zwischen denen auch die eine oder andere Clubshow anfällt. Und so begann die Tour der Amis tatsächlich vergangenen Dienstag in der Pumpe in Kiel.

In der Landeshauptstadt bin ich Ewigkeiten nicht mehr gewesen, und im großen Hauptsaal der Pumpe tatsächlich noch nie. Das spielte beim Ticketkauf allerdings keine Rolle, war das Konzert doch zunächst im Max angekündigt gewesen, bevor es aus Produktionsgründen ortsverlegt wurde. Der eigentliche Kicker für mich, mir diese Tour noch einmal anzuschauen, war allerdings die Ankündigung von Neptunian Maximalism als Support. Die Belgier mussten später leider canceln - aber dafür gab es zum Glück ebenso spannenden Ersatz in Form von Insect Ark:

INSECT ARK

Klar, ein langes Abräumerset mit Traumsound wie letztes Jahr am Roadburn Festival-Sonntag war hier und heute natürlich nicht zu erwarten. Dennoch schlugen sich Dana Schechter (Bass), Tim Wyskida (Drums) und Lynn Wright (Gitarre und Lap Steel) mit ihrem doom-dröhnenden Noise Rock sehr gut. Vom Gesang der Bandchefin hätte schon gerne mehr gehört (vielleicht ein Erste-Reihe-Problem), der Mix aus knarzig krachener Dreckigkeit, grobem und filigranem Spiel und düstertrauriger Atmosphäre holte mich aber natürlich wieder voll ab. Wie sollte es beim dargebotenen Songmaterial von "Raw Blood Singing" auch anders sein?

Als Roadburngänger ist man natürlich ein bisschen verwöhnt, was das Publikum angeht. Doch Blood Incantation sind bei aller Originalität eben auch Titelstory-Protagonisten gedruckter Metalzeitschriften und ziehen somit schon eine "normalere" - und somit dooferweiser auch respektlosere - Menge an, in der sich ein lästiger Anteil von Banausen unbedingt während der Show der Vorband lautstark miteinander unterhalten muss. Nervte. Ohne Scheiß: Es war ein warmer Sommertag - hättet ihr zum Sabbeln nicht rausgehen können?

BLOOD INCANTATION

Als Hauptgang gab es - Überraschung! - natürlich wieder das dreiviertelstündige "Absolute Elsewhere"-Album in all seiner Genregrenzen sprengenden, superpräzise brutalen deathmetallischen, progressiven, voivod-riffigen, tangerineverdreamten Pracht.

Ägyptoesoterische Sci-Fi-Bühnendeko war diesmal nicht am Start, aber personell wurde selbstverständlich wieder das komplette Fünferbesteck inklusive zusätzlicher Analogsynthies, ohne die das Album ja auch kaum spielbar wäre, aufgefahren. Alles wie letztes Mal im Gruenspan also?

Nein, besser! Zunächst einmal war der Sound besser. Hier waren Blood Incantations weniger infernalisch laut und ihre musikalische Wundertüte im Vergleich einfach detaillierter zu verstehen. Außerdem war das Set länger. Es gab im Zugabenteil wieder eine mit Synthies und zwei Gongs bestrittene Ambient-Passage und die Show endete erneut mit "Obliquity of the Epcliptic" von der "Luminscent Bridge"-EP.

Davor allerdings gab es nicht nur ein Stück, sondern immerhin eine Zeitreise (ein sehr ausgiebig und unterhaltsam mit Hilfe von Effekten während einer Ansage ausgeführtes Thema) zum 2016er Full-Length-Debüt "Starspawn" mit "Vitrication of Blood" und "Hidden History of the Human Race" (2019) mit "The Giza Power Plant". Sehr schön, dass auch in diesen älteren Stücken die Synthesizer voll ins oldschool-todesbleierne Geschehen eingebunden wurden.

Der Kult der innerhalb von zwei Tagen aufeinanderfolgenden "Timewave Zero"-Ambient-Show und vollmetallischen Eskalation auf dem Roadburn 2024 bleibt nach wie vor unerreichbar, aber im für mich zweiten Anlauf mit "Absolute Elsewhere" haben Blood Incantation mit ihrer ersten Show in Kiel eine äußerst beeindruckende Annäherung hingelegt. Sehr groß!

TEMPLE FANG - Live at dB's / Live at Sonic Whip

Rejoice! Dutch Epic Psychedelic Rockers Temple Fang have self-released two new albums - and just like four of the seven releases I already had in my collection from them, they both begin with the two words "Live at".

TEMPLE FANG - Live at Sonic Whip (LP) (2026)

"Live at Sonic Whip" basically is a live version of LP 1 of the fantastic first studio album double album "Lifted From The Wind", containing the two each side-long tracks "The River" and "Once". Of course both songs more than live up to their studio recordings.

Temple Fang are just a class of their own on stage, always living their music to the fullest and letting it find new ways and waves of expressing itself. Even when they don't change much about the structure of a song, and even though their music in general is rooted in deeply familiar Blues, Psych and Prog traditions, it always somehow feels fresh and new.

On "Once" they even add some special sauce with the guest performance of Mees Vullings (Heath / The Bird Experience), who adds an exciting extra level of greatness to the piece with his signature amplified harmonica playing. This is everything you want from this band and more. Definitely among Temple Fang's peak recorded performances!

The record is housed in a simple hand-stamped and numbered cover, just like their 2020 full-length debut "Live at Merleyn". Very nice.

TEMPLE FANG - Live at dB's (Tape) (2026)

Do we already want to listen to these songs again? Yeah, why not? Why not even longer? "Live at "dB's" features a version of "Once" which runs nine minutes longer than usual, so the track alone reaches the half-hour mark. More than another half of an hour in comparison to "Live at Sonic Whip" is added with two more tracks from the recent studio album, "Harvest Angel" and "Josephine". And that's still not all, because this show recorded in Utrecht started with the classic "Gemini", so the quartet treats us with all in all over ninety minutes of magnetic instrumental performances and fantastic vocals leading to pure Psychedelic bliss.

Sadly there is something serious to critique here, and it's not that the sound is a bit rawer and could use a little more brilliance here and there (not to keen on the uncomfortable way the low end is booming sometimes), but it actually is the total length. And no, I'm not getting bored by the music, but appearantly it's just too much music for the poor pink cassette shell supposed to carry it!
There is some physical friction and drag at the beginning, which simply makes it impossible to play that thing, unless I spool forward by hand until I'm a minute in (where thanks to a long guitar intro  not that much has happened yet). I still have the feeling that the whole tape then still spins a little bit too slow... and expectedly a minute before "The River" ends the tape decelerates and stops again.

I love me my tapes (as evident in my ongoing cassette craze chronicles), but this one I'm afraid can only serve as a nice-looking haptic addition to the digital Bandcamp release. Of course I can only speak of my own copy, maybe the shell is somehow just glued together a bit too tightly and I could actually fix it... or completely ruin it while trying... Nah, better live with it as it is. And that, dear labels and artists, is one example of why you should always provide a download with your releases! 

SMÅLAND - Oro Och Ältande

The area of Sweden we were traveling through wasn't exactly densely populated. It also was already late in the day, when our car broke down. And mobile phones of course weren't a thing back then. So just calling for help wasn't an option, while - judging from the lack of traffic we had experienced before - waiting for someone to stop and assist us didn't seem very promising either.

SMÅLAND - Oro Och Ältande (LP) (2026)

We folded out our map, figured out our current position and decided to go on a little hike westward to the next village. Which meant to leave the road in favour of a shortcut leading us past a narrow lake and through a small strip of woodland. Hard to say how long that would take us, but since as long as we could see it in the slightly dimming light a clean path went right in that direction, we hoped to make it a comfortable while before it would get completely dark.

The sun however was already quite low before us, when we walked besides the shores of the lake, where a lonely swan  floated parallel to us. We joked that he was following us and even waved him goodbye, when the lake ended and our path carried on out of his sight.

But then a couple of minutes later, just casually looking back we saw that the swan had indeed gotten out of the water to waddle to the footpath. He wasn't pursuing us any further, but just stood there with wide open wings like a statue guarding the way. His silhoette looked imposing and surreal. It was the first thing which send a shiver down my spine that night.

Reaching the edge of the forest took us longer than estimated. Some rays of light still made it through the trunks, but most of them were swallowed somewhere in the thickness of the undergrowth before us. Luckily, even considering we had been slower than expected so far, it would take us at most half an hour, until we would step out of the shadows and hopefully see the lights of civilzation right before us. Any longer and we seriously might have relied on the light of the stars and the moon to guide us.

It wasn't even half an hour, when we noticed an illumination, which had to be streetlights. Flickering streetlights? Something was off. Soon it was clear that the light wasn't artificial but came from a fire - and we weren't nearing the other end of the woods, but only a clearing. Maybe two dozen lines of trees separated us from it, when we recognized a huge shadow in the shape of antlers beside the flames. Was it an elk? No the figure was standing upright on its legs and had its arm outstreched towards the sky! And there was movement to its feet, casts of smoke, flame and flesh, creatures beyond the grasp of our imagination, dancing around the fire in eery silence, as if they had not fully entered our world yet.

We should have turned our backs at them to run away as fast as we could, but our feet didn't obey us any longer. We kept approaching the unreal scenery as if we were mesmerized by a hypnotic spell... 

Oh wait!

You expected an album review, didn't you? Sorry, I somehow got carried away describing one of many possible scenarios for which Småland's "Oro Och Ältande" ("Worry and Rumination") could be the score.

The trio weaves organic and Electronic sounds to deep, dark yet also strangely magical Ambient compositions of profound depth. This music seems to come from the same otherworld as Anna von Hausswolff's "All Thoughts Fly" - and indeed it has been released by the Organ Queen herself on her label Pomperipossa Records. That connection and the record's artwork of folk tale fairies and horrors promise a lot - and fulfil it all. This album is a beautifully ambivalent stream of imagination, drifting between hope and foreboding, between nightmare and dream.

And if you cannot get enough of this Nordic mystery become sound - there's one Mogwai remix of "Det Är Aldrig För Sent Att Ge Upp" ("It's Never Too Late To Give Up"), which you can add as a digital bonus track: