Invocation – The Mastery of the Unseen

Band: Invocation
Title: The Mastery of the Unseen
Label: Iron Bonehead Productions
Release date: September 26^th, 2018.
Country: Chile
Format Reviewed: High quality digital format

The Mastery of the Unseen is Invocation’s new and 3^rd installment into the blackened death metal that this Chilean band offers to us. This two song EP which has been pressed to a limited edition on 7” vinyl cranks out a little over ten minutes of occult inspired madness.

The music presents itself with a very darkened overtone in the overall sound but also adding to this, is the occult inspired cover art which was created by Rodrigo Pereira Salvatierra. This can be described as very dark mystic scene which I found very suitable and complementary to go with the music contained in this EP.

Hints of both American and Euro death metal can be heard here with haunting melodies, dirty guitar tones and a combination of both low growl vocals to higher demonic screams that carry over from fast to mid speed tempos of the drums. However, sometimes the songs can also slow down to moments of a dreary doom-like style and in some ways the sound of Invocation here reminds me of the nature of bands like Brutality, Incantation and older Cemetery. So, besides a dark sense of death metal that is definitely present here, there is also an older school death metal influence too. I also found there is a good level of balance in this production which projects the rawness of the sound while all the instrumentation is present without necessarily one burying the other as this sometimes happens in recordings. Overall, I felt this EP offered both a strong musical as well as a strong visual presence in relation to the cover art, in which both fit together rather well. 9 /10 Eldritch of Death