The Infernal Storm (2000) - Incantation

After the apocalyptic chaos of Diabolical Conquest, Incantation entered a period of transition. Daniel Corchado had left the band, and John McEntee — founder and guitarist — took on vocal duties himself. The result was The Infernal Storm, an album that pushed the band’s music into even darker, uglier territory. It’s not just death metal. It’s a total collapse into murk, madness, and oblivion. While it doesn’t receive the same widespread acclaim as their early classics, The Infernal Storm is one of the most suffocating and underrated statements of pure death metal terror.

Tracklist:

1. Anoint the Chosen

2. Extinguishing Salvation

3. Impending Diabolical Conquest

4. The Unholy Ones

5. Chalice of Paradise

6. Heavenly Damnation

7. The Fallen

8. Sempiternal Pandemonium

9. Lustful Demise

10. The Ibex Moon

From the very beginning of Anoint the Chosen, it’s clear that Incantation had no interest in refinement. The track opens with an avalanche of sound — guitars buzzing like flies over rotting flesh, drums pummeling in chaotic patterns, McEntee’s voice a cavernous roar that sounds less like singing and more like a curse being hurled from some ancient altar. The production is thick and muddy, but it perfectly suits the material. This is not an album about clarity. It’s about immersion — drowning the listener in hopeless, amorphous violence.

Extinguishing Salvation continues this assault, alternating between frantic blast sections and massive, slow doom crawls that feel like a tomb caving in around you. The riffs are so downtuned and so grim that they almost dissolve into the earth itself. It’s these sudden shifts in tempo — the lurching doom giving way to uncontrollable speed — that make the record so disorienting, almost ritualistic in its destruction.

One of the key tracks is Impending Diabolical Conquest, which ties back to the themes of their previous album but strips away any grandiosity. It’s pure rot and filth, driven by a kind of anti-melodic logic. The song feels like it’s dragging you downward, clawing away any sense of direction or hope.

The Unholy Ones and Chalice of Paradise lean heavily into doom-death territory. Here, Incantation slows to a crawl, letting each funereal riff stretch into infinity. The songs feel less written and more summoned, channeling a suffocating weight that few death metal bands can replicate. The moments of relative speed are frantic and sick, like a dying beast thrashing in its final moments.

The second half of the album — with songs like The Fallen and Sempiternal Pandemonium — continues this descent. Sempiternal Pandemonium is particularly grotesque, its structure collapsing into dissonant shrieks and jagged rhythms that seem barely held together. There’s a feeling that the album itself is falling apart as it progresses, which only strengthens its oppressive character.

And then comes The Ibex Moon. Though it would later become a fan favorite and a live staple, here it feels buried under layers of grime. The riffing is unforgettable — slow, ritualistic, menacing. It perfectly closes the record, offering no real resolution, only a final suffocation under the crushing weight of Incantation’s vision.

Listening to The Infernal Storm is not a casual experience. It’s a journey into the most hopeless, pestilential depths of death metal. Unlike Onward to Golgotha, which still retains a kind of mythic grandeur, The Infernal Storm feels fully rotted, like it’s being played by corpses in a decaying cathedral. It’s not catchy. It’s not polished. But it’s absolutely authentic in its atmosphere — and that makes it one of the most rewarding death metal albums once you surrender yourself to it.

At a time when death metal was becoming either hyper-technical or moving toward cleaner production, Incantation doubled down on ugliness. They created something that feels utterly wrong in the best way possible. As a fan of death metal that emphasizes atmosphere and pure emotional devastation, The Infernal Storm holds a special place. It might be overlooked, but for those who seek the deepest, darkest corners of the genre, it’s indispensable.