This weekend saw weed-headed cartoon studio Adult Swim host a virtual version of their Adult Swim Festival, complete with panels, cartoon premieres, and livestreamed performances by various musical artists. Among them were Atlanta stoner metallers Mastodon and Denver death-doomers Blood Incantation, whose full sets at the fest can be viewed below.
As you’ll see in the footage below, Mastodon really went all-out with their performance, packing their stage set-up with blacklight-reactive decorations and posters. More so, they themselves got coated in paint, so that when the blacklight came on they glowed like a seedy motel room. Meanwhile, Blood Incantation went for a more stripped-down, back-room look with their performance, but the band’s playing and riveting death metal riffs make it no less exciting to watch. As far as metal acts to include in their festival, Adult Swim did well by picking these two.
Here’s Mastodon’s setlist, followed by their performance:
- Asleep in the Deep (live debut)
- Thickening
- Steambreather
- The Motherload
- Blood and Thunder
And here’s Blood Incantation’s setlist, followed by their performance:
- Starspawn
- Chaoplasm
- Obfuscating the Linear Threshold
- Hovering Lifeless
Blood Incantation’s Hidden History of the Human Race made our own Top 10 of 2019 list last year, with The Pit writing, “After 2015’s Starspawn, it seems Blood Incantation climbed deeper into the intergalactic subconscious to painstakingly construct a brilliant ode to cosmic horror with Hidden History. Already-great riffs are couched in mind-bending time manipulation and unexpected twists to create genuinely breathtaking death metal.”
The band also took part in Necrot frontman Luca Indiro’s video campaign against white supremacy. “I just woke up one day and instead of feeling powerless I decided that a little difference can still be made,” Indiro told The Pit. “We are all part of micro realities, and the metal scene is one of them. None of us can change the world, but we can help inspire change inside of our social circle. I decided to create an email and started writing to band members that I know from past tours and shows asking em to send 5-second videos saying ‘Fuck racism’ and to get more people involved. Eric was the one that helped me the most. He understood immediately what was needed to be done and helped me a lot getting people to send videos. Everybody helped by sending a video or spreading the word it’s still happening and it’s still growing. I started it but it’s really everybody’s project we are all participating and my friend Mark at Tankcrimes compound is helping with the video edits. Sometimes metal fans don’t understand that the metal musicians live on the road most of the year and travel all over the world, sharing experiences with people of all races and nationalities. It’s time for metal fans to understand that we are disgusted by racism and hopefully that can inspire someone to change his/her views.”
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Words by Chris Krovatin
