Onward to Golgotha is the debut studio album by American death metal band Incantation, released on May 5, 1992 by Relapse Records. It was re-released in October 2006 with a bonus DVD of live performances. Decibel added the album to their hall of fame. To celebrate being added to the hall of fame, it was re-released on 180-gram vinyl, but limited to only 1,000 copies.
Guitarist John McEntee said the album's recording was the band's first time in the studio. The album was a collection of songs that the band had already written and released on demos, which McEntee described as a "collage". He recalled in 2017:
In response to the increasing commercial success of death metal in the early 1990s, the members of Incantation "were hell-bent on driving [the genre] back into darker underground regions where it had originally arisen from in the mid-to-late âÂÂ80s with bands like Possessed, Celtic Frost, Bathory and Death," according to Scott Koerber of Decibel. Hence, the sound on Onward to Golgotha has been characterized by a "morbid, atmosphere", drawing influence from black metal and doom metal. Scott Koerber of Decibel described the album's sound as utilizing "swarming guitars, blasting darkness and crushing doom" guided by a "warlike, blackened death metal pace, with abstract leads and pinch harmonics illuminating the tangled mass." Greg Prato of AllMusic described the album as "the sound of being swallowed whole into the bowels of hell" and "death metal at its most extreme."
Incantation guitarist John McEntee cited the 1985 album Seven Churches by Possessed as a major influence on Onward to Golgotha.
Greg Prato of AllMusic gave the album three and a half stars out of five. He wrote: "Onward to Golgotha does not let up one iota in its intensity -- evidenced in the vocal growls, manic riffing, and wicked drumbeats -- from beginning to end. Take a gander at some of the song titles. [...] Any question of how brutal it all must sound? Didn't think so."
Guitarist John McEntee told Vice in 2017 regarding the album's impact and status as a fan favorite from the band's discography:
In 2021, Tom Morgan of Invisible Oranges wrote: "The whole aesthetic of Onward To Golgotha is in fact so well-realised that it has come to define the sonic parameters of âÂÂold school death metalâ in our collective imaginations. Although Incantation and RelapseâÂÂs relationship would eventually turn sour, Onward To Golgotha is an undeniable genre masterpiece â the very first released by the then-fledgling label."