Heavy Song of the Week is a feature on Heavy Consequence breaking down the top metal, punk, and hard rock tracks you need to hear every Friday. This week, No. 1 goes to Blood Incantation’s “The Message [Tablet I].”

It’s hard to call Blood Incantation purely a death metal band anymore. They already have an mini-album of Tangerine Dream-style ambient material, and those progressive rock/Berlin School influences — musically and conceptually — are at the heart of the band’s latest opus Absolute Elsewhere, which comes complete with augmented-reality lore. Blood Incantation have officially reached their prog world-building phase.

That means the extreme metal has been somewhat dialed back compared to earlier works, though not completely, as heard on the LP’s track “The Message [Tablet I]”.

Beautiful RUSH-like prog sections are juxtaposed with blasting bouts of death metal a la Morbid Angel, complete with guttural vocals and prog freakouts. The chaotic arrangement conjures Blood Incantation’s trademark cosmic psychedelia — a tapestry of otherworldly sounds that come at the listener fast. That our brains might struggle to deconstruct it all at once is part of this band’s mystifying effect.

Honorable Mentions:

Coheed and Cambria – “Blind Side Sonny”

Sometimes a band just needs to lay down a ripper, a song that gets everyone going — band and audience alike — during a live set. “Blind Side Sonny” is that song for Coheed and Cambria — a howling, straight-up ripper. For all of their dense concept songs and storytelling, it’s refreshing to hear Coheed simply rocking out and playing sick riffs. And even still, they were able to tie it into their larger story arc, introducing the titular villain Sonny.

Lacuna Coil – “Oxygen”

We’re hearing some Lamb of God influence in the verses on Lacuna Coil‘s new single, “Oxygen,” tasty bouts of groovy thrash with Andrea Ferro’s guttural vocals entrenched among the beefy riffs. The chorus is patently Lacuna Coil though, as co-vocalist Cristina Scabbia sends the song to melodic heights that few metal bands could hope to reach — another fine example of the band’s two-headed vocal approach and the ability to pen songs that make full use of it.

Sol Invicto – “The Obvious Play”

Sol Invicto is the long gestating supergroup project of Deftones guitarist Stephen Carpenter, Cypress Hill percussionist Eric Bobo, and producer/guitarist Richie Londres. The trio is set to drop its first official EP, Loosely Aware, on November 8th, with single “The Obvious Play” being our first taste of the three-track release. Among the more brutal tracks to bear Carpenter’s credit (this ain’t Deftones), the cut features tenacious metalcore riffing and impressive harsh vocals from Plague to Pyres vocalist Sean Plague. A full-length album is planned for 2025, and we’re certainly eager to hear more.