Freshly sparked incense made of crackling pine sap and the matted, dried scalps of the local clergy smokes high in the moonlight as Valparaíso, Chile-based bestial blackened death metal trio INVOCATION welcome the wrathful-in-wait as they cleanse the realm, inciting their latest (and most key) ritual to date in the form of a debut full-length album. ‘The Archaic Sanctuary (Ritual Body Postures)‘ is sacrificial dagger-wielding death worship presented in periphery blurring spiritual psychosis, a haze of hypnotic rhythmic movements that lull and strike at the psyche in barking and ravening acts ’til their invasive grind down upon the ear possesses outright. Occult, bestial, cavernous and impossible to contain within the brick-and-marbled temple they’d retake all that crawls from the shadows here mutates the senses into a coughing, spasmic heap. This violent accost is made possible by hands that are by nature cognizant of death metal tradition where the riff still meets a hammer strong enough to burst a brainpan wide open yet manages echoic horror in its occupation of space and time, a feat which helps drive their cult’s actions deeper in mind.

Invocation formed back in 2015 and quickly prepared a set of ominous, heavily atmospheric blackened death metal songs that’d split the difference between bestial death’s wrathful voice and the groaning lilt of caverncore not too far from the realm of Wrathprayer or earlier Grave Miasma when each band carried the most ‘Onward to Golgotha‘-esque trait in diffuse space. This’d amounted to their ‘Seance Pt. I‘ (2016) tape and the ‘Mastery of the Unseen‘ (2018) 7″ which I’d reviewed favorably upon release. Between occult ritualistic themes, intense album artwork and a voluminous yet horrified sound I’d felt the bands rise from the grave had intense potential for dark sounds that was conscious of the ‘old school’, rooted in volatile death metal sounds. This was realized quite well on the still impressive ‘Attunement to Death‘ (2020) EP a couple of years later, another record I’d reviewed favorably but this time for their focus on the riffs and a somewhat more readable but still dark underground sound in line with the best traditions of Chilean death metal. That release set enough of a standard going forward that I’ve been anticipating their next release for the last three or so years.

While we do in fact lose some of the sharper definition of the bass guitar as its blurs into the war of the rhythm guitar’s growling loose sprawl the bestial noise produced by their unison acts as a formidable leading role as ‘The Archaic Sanctuary (Ritual Body Posture)‘ builds its dark, foreboding tone up front. These production values and general sound design still bear the vehement bloodiness that’d helped define ‘Attunement to Death‘ but less of the immediate bristle of the guitar tone, making for an experience which is both all about its menacing grooves and a somewhat realistic render where the drums reverberate on a basement level of harrowing swat and the intense snarling gust of the vocals rise up from the crypt mouth’s stone steps. To my ears this is a brilliantly classic mid-to-late 90’s Chilean death metal sound (also the same-era black/death from New Jersey and Texas) in terms of its atmosphere and the brutal pummel of its meter though we do get more frequent shades of black metal meander in their riffcraft as the album burns beyond the immensity of opener “Ecstatic Trance“. For my own taste the first song alone told me right out of the gates that Invocation had not lost their morbid touch, but rather that they’ve intensified the ways in which they develop the hypnose tangentially available to previous recordings.

From the slapping whorl of “The Serpent of Faardal” at its peak to the upward gripping skeletal hand of the dual guitar attack on closer “Hypnosis” the blackened stabs found on ‘The Archaic Sanctuary (Ritual Body Posture)‘ were frequently the most interesting movements, or, parts that’d stuck in mind after some repeated listening sessions. This was moreso for the variety they’d offered as the overall experience is both focused on its droning voice, and to great effect, though the shocks of guitar interest that do arrive along the way help to avoid the whole of the full listen from becoming an indistinct dungeon-set grind. The riffs that kick off “Opium Thebiacum (Somniferum)” for example set up the rattling push of the piece with a general melody built by force, not that far from how a band like Rotten Tomb might foreshadow some of their bigger riff driven pieces, before they roll into a simpler verse riff with a punishing step which punctuates each stanza. This is classic death metal stuff to be sure, high riff-per-minute rates delivered within a barreling sound that should feel oppressive but still manages throttled-out movement that’d caught my ear each time I returned. In some sense their work is familiar, sure, but in other ways it clearly stands out for the detail they’ve poured into these otherwise easy-moving structures.

With such consistency of force and attention to both directive and meta-level movements this record feels great to return to though what it gains in pure underground death metal credibility it lacks in dynamic presentation. In this sense some of these songs are stronger for the personification given by ruddy, arcane production values while others won’t carry such profound impact when every song goes this hard with its slithering dread-built movement. My favorite piece on the album, “The Psicopompos”, is an energetic peak in terms of its main rhythm guitar assault within the second half of the full listen, carrying a more rabidly slapped-through pace and one of the meaner death metal grooves on an album which is packed with bounding, predatorial riffs front to back. If yanked from the rift in singular observation this is an awesome representation of their classics-minded approach to atmospherically rich death metal in a wrathful, morbid style but when set in the middle portion of this record it merely matches the energy of its surroundings as the sixth ‘hymn to death’ out of eight. This is hardly a complaint, moreso a suggestion that one probably -should- sit with a record like this for 2-3 listens in a row and get lost in it before beginning to peck around for the most choice riffs. Per my own experience with this album those riffs will arrive no matter what.

Robed in the primal smoke and gore of their enduring ritual I’d found the immersive value of ‘The Archaic Sanctuary (Ritual Body Posture)‘ could reach intoxicating levels, a trance induced by the tremors of grotesque sound design and expert riffcraft. While I’d suggest Invocation’s muse is of a very specific niche tradition the appeal of there work should be obvious enough for any fan of cavernous, diabolically aggressive death metal and despite how simple its overall effect might be at face value this is not a thoughtless bestial purge for those willing to stab both hands into the murk and follow along. A high recommendation.

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