In 1992 Incantation released one of the most crushing dark death metal albums of all time in the form of their debut full length offering Onward To Golgotha. The album was a perfect blend of technical death metal riffs with crazy tremolo picking, brutal death metal shredding and blasting and a dark doom metal atmosphere. It’s considered a classic by death metal die hards and is an album at the top of my “must own” albums list. In 2008 Necroharmonic Productions got their hands on the rough mix of the original recording of Onward To Golgotha, which had been erased and never used until now, and gave it a proper release in the form of Blasphemous Cremation.

Blasphemous Cremation contains the original recordings of six tracks from Onward To Golgotha; "Rotting Spiritual Embodiment", "Blasphemous Cremation", "Godsend" (which was later renamed "Deliverance Of Horrific Prophecies"), "Profanation", "Christening The Afterbirth" and "Eternal Torture". The production is raw, dirty and disgusting, even more so than the “polished” final recording and mix of Onward To Golgotha. Five of Blasphemous Cremation’s six tracks are longer than the same songs on Onward To Golgotha with the album consisting of an addition two minutes and eighteen seconds of material.

Musically, there isn’t a big difference between the two releases, it’s still Incantation and it’s still the same material, but while Blasphemous Cremation may seem like a pointless release, it’s so raw and dark it actually makes the material sound better, which is insane considering how good Onward To Golgotha is.

If you’re an Incantation fan, especially a fan of early Incantation, you definitely need to pick up this release. I wouldn’t say it’s necessary for new fans, I’d still recommend getting Onward To Golgotha over this just because it has 11 songs compared to 6 here, but Blasphemous Cremation is a killer release and I can’t help but scratch my head and wonder why Incantation didn’t clean up this mix and use it in the final recording. If you’re a big enough fan to pick up Upon The Throne Of Apocalypse then you definitely need to get Blasphemous Cremation. Incantation at their finest!

Written By: Teufel