Interview May 1, 2020

Blood Incantation

When Blood Incantation released Starspawn in 2016, it sent shockwaves through the Death Metal world and it was immediately widely recognized as an instant classic. Hailed as one of the best releass of the year by many in the press, it was also my personal favorite Death Metal album that year. Late last year, they repeated this exploit by releasing an album that not only equalled, but, to many, surpassed Starspawn in songwriting, execution and overall quality. Hidden History Of The Human Race is mastefully executed proggy Death Metal filled with heavy, brutal riffs and evocative, atmospheric passages that flow flawlessly from one another. Truly an album worth experiencing from start to finish, multiple times. Make sure to pick up a copy of Hidden History Of The Human Race through Dark Descent Records (USA) and Century Media (world).

What have you guys been listening to the most lately?
Isaac Faulk (drums)
We’ve been on tour for about six and a half weeks, so “lately” is what we’ve been listening to in the van. Today, we were listening to a playlist of LAIBACH playing their set at Brutal Assault Festival last year and then before that, we were listening to a playlist of some 80’s Pop stuff. On tour, in general, we listen to all kinds of stuff from like ELO, this Ambient band called MO BOMA…

Morris Kolontyrsky (guitar)
That’s a classic, Mo Boma.

Paul Riedl (guitar, vocals)
Myths Of The Near Future: Part Three is an incredible album. If you ever see an unofficial vinyl version of this record, we did not release it. *Hahaha*

Isaac
Added to that, a lot of New Age and Ambient stuff, BRIAN ENO, KITARO…

Jeff Barrett(bass)
A lot of soundtracks, including video games, movies, all sorts of different TV shows.

Morris
Sonic The Hedgehog!

Isaac
Metal Gear Solid.

Paul
Sonic two but redone, more like in a dance way.

Jeff
There’s Chrono Cross, the music of Yasunori Mitsuda.

Paul
Chrono Trigger. Also this band HÄLLAS from Sweden. They have an album from 2017, Excerpts From A Future Past. We’re not sure if it’s a MOODY BLUES tribute or not, but it’s an amazing album. One of the coolest guitar records I’ve heard in like 10 years. We played with them three times in Europe actually, at festivals. It’s really good, cinematic Progressive Rock. They call it Adventure Rock, that’s their schtick. It’s really good jamming, like first WISHBONE ASH and YES and then nice THIN LIZZY or early JUDAS PRIEST, just a little bit of grit over clean harmonies. Amazing guitars and synths. Great vocals, great bass leads. Incredible band. Good driving music too.

Morris
In the morning, when we all wake up, we get in the car, we smoke a little weed, we light some incense and we like to listen to stuff like POPOL VUH, tantric songs. Just stuff to get the day going slowly and amp up to BRIAN ENO to eventually end up at something like OPPRESSOR or SUFFOCATION but it starts out nice and easy.

Paul
The other week we were in Chicago, I think in Joliet, and we were listening to this Canadian band PURULENCE, Steeve Hurdle was in before joining GORGUTS and it was the first brutal thing we listened to in what seemed like weeks. We kind of recognized “Oh, whoa! Hell yeah Death Metal!”

Morris
It’s just something that we hear at shows all the time.

Isaac
When we listen to Metal, I usually find that on tour, it’s not about “Oh, let me show my friends this cool band.” It’s just, “let’s listen to a classic, awesome album”.

Paul
Something that we all want to listen to because the production, the van doesn’t really lend itself to nice production so we can’t really listen to Black Metal, we can’t really listen to Funeral Doom or raw shit. It’s gotta be pretty well produced, so classic records, a lot of Heavy Metal from the 70’s and 80’s.

Isaac
A whole lot of PINK FLOYD!

Jeff
The entire catalogue. Above all of this.

Isaac
KING CRIMSON, or any of that really classic, Progressive or Hard Rock stuff. We listen to a ton of that stuff.

Morris
Classic Heavy Metal, KING DIAMOND, MERCIFUL FATE, PRIEST, MAIDEN, we can’t get away from that. It’s excellent driving music. Somewhere In Time, I could drive for hours listening to that record.

How does your playlist change when you’re at home, as opposed to on the road?
Isaac
It’s a lot different because, especially if we’re either working on stuff as a band or on tour, you’re constantly bombarded by Death Metal. We do some other styles that are mixed in there but, we’re primarily a pretty brutal band so at home, if we’re not being bombarded by that constantly, I’ll listen to Death Metal or listen to heavy music more. But when you’re being forced into that world all the time, I find myself listening to the most relaxing, chilled out music as possible.

Morris
Leading up to recording Hidden History Of The Human Race, we were all listening to a lot of New Age music. The only CDs I had in my car were TANGERINE DREAM Zeit, MICHAEL STEARNS Encounter and stuff like that. Then when we went in to record, the only brutal music I was listening to was our own band.

Paul
Leading to the recording of the album, I didn’t listen to any Metal for like two months and then only instrumental rehearsals of our songs to try to get it right. Then during the entire assembly process, for the remixing and then doing the layout and the booklet, it was only New Age. No Metal. Finally, I think in August or maybe early September, I was like, “Oh yeah, Death Metal.”

When you’re in the writing process, do you have any go-to records or style that you go for?
Paul
Yeah, elite classics like DEMILICH Nespithe, DEATH Human and Individual Thought Patterns, GORGUTS Erosion of Sanity…the shit that we’re trying to aspire to relatively approach. IMMOLATION Dawn of Possession…

Isaac
GORGUTS’ entire discography.

Paul
Yeah, actually, I was really listening to the one I’m least familiar with, From Wisdom To Hate. I was listening to that one in my truck for the weeks leading up to the thing. There’s kind of different aspects to that one, it’s sort of a forgotten in-between.

Isaac
Leading in, for what I wanted to do for the drums, I was listening to Effigy of the Forgotten by SUFFOCATION and Individuals Thought Patterns by DEATH. Some DEFEATED SANITY Disposal of the Dead // Darmatha, which is by far, one of the most influential newer records that came out for our band.

Paul
Also this record called Elvenefris by LYKATHEA AFLAME from Czech Republic. Incredible! It’s a huge influence on our sound as far as the combination of ethereal, literal beautiful atmospheric music and then unrelenting, very brutal music. Very special record.

Morris
OPETH as well. We’ve listened to a lot of that in the car on this trip.

Paul
It’s good driving music too. Any type of cinematic, long form music. The last couple weeks, it’s only been four or five hours of driving but the first couple of weeks, there was a lot eight hour drives, sometimes a ten hour drive or even sixteen hour drive originally. This tour started at the opposite end of the country from where we live. So we had to drive out there for two days, drive the whole country through, go through Denver and keep going all the way around, zigzagging through Canada and it’s gonna end at the opposite end again and we have to drive all the way back again.

Morris
We got a lot of music left to listen to. Maybe some podcasts.

Isaac
Today, and often on this tour, we like to go to record stores, in wherever we are to buy lots of stuff. On this tour, I think we’ve all bought maybe the most records we’ve ever bought.

Morris
We’re coming back with a distro.

What are some of the highlights?
Paul
Mostly Ambient, 70’s Prog music, a lot of PINK FLOYD, a lot of TANGERINE DREAM, BRIAN ENO, EDGAR FROESE, KRAFTWERK.

Isaac
I also picked up a lot of bigger Pop records that I wanted in my collection, like TEARS FOR FEARS and stuff. GARY NUMAN.

Paul
Couple Metal records though. I got an O.G. NAUSEA Crimes Against Humanity on Wild Rags along with AUTOPSY Retribution For The Dead 12″ in Richmond, but for the most part, it’s really been 70’s Progressive Ambient music.

Isaac
A lot of stuff like PETER GABRIEL. Multiple KING CRIMSON records have been bought by all of us.

Paul
There’s three copies of Atom Heart Mother (Pink Floyd), three copies of Trans-Europe Express (Kraftwerk).

Isaac
We were just joking earlier that we bought so much stuff on the tour that sometimes I’ll forget what albums I bought. “Did I already buy this?”

What’s the find of the day?
Paul
Today, I got a new LAIBACH record. Actually not new, it’s five years old. There’s one record MICHAEL STERNS Planetary Unfolding which I actually already have two copies of, not including cassette or CD, but the original version of this was the original cover art, on the original label. It’s hard to get in America and pretty expensive, but in Canada, there was a good deal because there’s some water damage on it. It was actually in my cart on Discogs and I was kind of being like, “Alright, if we get there, we get there. If we don’t, it’s not meant to be.” Then it happened to be the day in the city that I was in so it happened. It’s an amazing record. It’s long form synth music, generally improvised but sounds like it follows a melodic pattern. Deep evocative space music. True space music, no drums.

Morris
We were at Aux 33 Tours today, there’s a record there that I don’t think any of us got today, but it’s amazing. GEOFFREY CHANDLER Starscapes, they have it in their Discogs thing there, but I’m sure you can get it in person. If you guys haven’t heard it, listen to it and if you enjoy it, I highly recommend you buy that LP, it’s at that store and it’s amazing.

Paul
Similar to this, from 1978 to about 1985, there was a lot of pioneering deep space Ambient music that was associated with New Age and a lot of that was put out by New Age private press labels. A lot of people in California specifically, and actually the Midwest, like Wisconsin and Michigan have a lot of this too. It was when it was still experimental enough to be kind of like KLAUS SCHULZE or POPOL VUH, like World music, but it’s not fully New Age.

Morris
It’s also like Fringe Hippie music. A lot of these older guys that grew up out of the Prog in the 70’s started to experiment with more minimalist sounds, using all the instruments that all the Prog Rock bands used.

Paul
People like that guy MICHAEL STEARNS, they’re all people who know how to make active music, but then they got so active…Same with that band BRAINTICKET from Switzerland, the guy Joël Vandroogenbroeck, he’s got like 28 million albums, after he made one of the most tripped out fucked up albums of all times. Allegedly, the first record in Switzerland ever recorded on LSD in the studio -called Cottonwood Hill, by the way- but he started making ultra minimal Space music. Same with BRIAN ENO, coming from Glam/Art Rock and just trying to make it as over the top as possible. Then trying to deconstruct it and make something really immersive, really spacious. We really have this idea where we want to play shows in a planetarium or a planetarium tour. We want to get good enough at playing Ambient music.

You guys mention a lot of Ambient music and you also play pretty heavy stuff, is contrast something that you look for in music?
Paul
Dynamics.

Isaac
For me, I get extremely bored very quickly if something is just one thing for too long and so I find that bands that experiment with mixing multiple styles but doing it in a way that’s cohesive, not just “oh let’s put this part in, just for the sake of it” but bands that incorporate many different things hold my interest. I mean, a band like PINK FLOYD goes from being completely Ambient and trippy to being a Rock band.

Morris
Even MORBID ANGEL does that.

Isaac
Yeah, it can be crazy and insane and intense but at the same time, be calming and soothing.

Morris
Morbid Angel has tons of guitars overlaying, like Ambient lead passages over those super brutal, slow moving riffs and then they have those interlude tracks that adds to that atmosphere.

Paul
You know, music and art in general is supposed to be reflective of life itself. Life is super dynamic and there’s all these ups and downs and peaks and valleys and all these textures. If you’re totally wasted all the time, only listening to this brutal Death, that’s fine but there’s a lot more subtle things in life that can have a greater impact, you know? We really want our band to be a band that people like us, who appreciate dynamics, can appreciate.

Jeff
It definitely helps us stand out in the world of very repetitive vocal leads and not changing the tone of your delivery at all, I think it really helps us be unique in our own way.

Paul
Every band is already more brutal than us, every band is already heavier and more insane. We’re not trying to outdo any of those people because there’s no point. There’s already an entire sub genre dedicated to only blastbeats for four minutes straight. We’re just trying to make our music something that is reflective of our own emotional intelligence and our own life experiences. A lot of people tell us that our music will make them more introspective, and some of the quiet passages, they have an emotional connection to. Even if it’s this one riff, clean guitar riff with delay on it but the chord progression resonates with this person in a way that is longer lasting than if we just blasted at them for 18 minutes.

Isaac
It’s truly that contrast from the heavy part to the delicate clean part, that make the clean parts stand out even more. You can listen to something that’s just that, the clean part for an entire record. That’s awesome. But because you’ve already been bombarded by this intensity, it lets you kind of go back in a little bit differently.

Jeff
I often look out while we are playing these clean parts and notice many people in the audience closing their eyes and kind of just feeling the music.

Morris
Put your phone down, close your eyes!

Paul
Nobody likes to watch a phone video of a band! It doesn’t matter if it’s fucking PINK FLOYD or GORGUTS.

Morris
Your YouTube videos aren’t gonna get any views, man!

Paul
It’s useless. Sometimes, I get it, you want to capture a moment. A moment is totally fine to capture but, at least to me, in my personal opinion, it takes me out of my element, it makes me think that you’re a fucking idiot and you don’t even appreciate what I’m trying to do for you anyway.

Isaac
As an audience member, when I’m at concerts and someone’s just in front of me with their phone, it completely obstructs your entire experience.

Paul
The whole time you’re doing it, your subconscious focuses on something which doesn’t exist: the future. You’re not part of the experience doing this.

Yeah, you’re taking everyone out of the experience! It drives me fucking nuts!
Isaac
I’ve seen people actually hit phones out of people’s hands. I’m not gonna do it, but every time I see the dude right at the front…

Paul
I understand taking a picture, but the front row is for head banging. People who actually want to be at this show and enjoy themselves. Being in the front is not for your fucking phone. It’s not for your press pass. If there’s a barrier protecting you to be a press person, sure, but the front row is for head banging for the people who want to see the show. And when you’re there dude, I want to kick your phone. I’m not gonna but I fucking want to.

Talking about shows, what would be some of the most memorable shows that you’ve experienced?
Isaac
One that we were are all at and probably most of us can count in our top concerts was JOHN CARPENTER.

Paul
In an opera house with all this nice seating and these huge curtains.

Morris
They were playing scenes from whatever movie soundtrack he was playing behind him.

Paul
Also, LAIBACH at Brutal Assault, that was a full on life changing, eye opening experience. We were only there because we liked Live Is Life, the OPUS cover, but that’s a cover so they didn’t even play it and we were waiting for it, like an hour and a half.

Isaac
And it just turned into the best show that we’d ever seen. Brutal Assault takes place in this giant fortress. It’s old and it’s been changed into this giant complex for this huge European Metal fest. So here’s Laibach who’s whole shtick is this satirical take on imperialism, totalitarianism, but you can’t tell if it’s making fun of it or totally for it. “What’s happening?” And they’re doing this song where the chorus is “Europe is falling apart”.

Paul
Yeah, the chorus of the song is “Europe is falling apart” and it’s this really deep, Techno rhythm. We’re just sitting there, these four American guys and our Danish tour manager and we’re trying to have a good time, listen to Live Is Life, you know, and then this song is in this ruined castle, in the sky. There’s 10 or 15,000 people here singing “Europe is falling apart”! *Haha*

Isaac
We’re just like, “This is insane! Are we even supposed to be here?”

Morris
The frontman now -he’s been for the last many years. He’s not the original dude-, his voice is so commanding man! You cannot get away from it, especially live.

Paul
It was a true spectacle. It was an illusion. Everybody in the band had a very important role and it was like a production. I thought I was watching a theater performance. It was so much more than just a band playing a show. Really, really transfixing performance. Also, the band HÄLLAS, we saw them three times but the one at Beyond The Gates in Norway was one of the best shows I’ve ever seen.

Isaac
Otherwise, one of my favorite shows I’ve ever seen was DEAD CAN DANCE and they’re doing another tour again next year, so I’m definitely gonna be sure to see them again.

Morris
I’ve also seen IRON MAIDEN like 12 times and it’s always the best show I’ve ever seen.

Do you guys remember the first time you really appreciated music?
Paul
I can remember different sub-versions of it.

Isaac
Different stages of figuring things out and growing up, and your taste evolves as you’re a kid and getting older. I would say, it’s hard to stay as excited about music. When you’re a teenager and you’re discovering stuff for the first time, there’s this crazy feeling you get from it and I don’t know that you’ll ever return to. I think it’s chasing the dragon.

Morris
The other day we were listening to Dark Side Of The Moon in the van and it’s been a minute since I’ve listened to it. When Breathe came on, every hair on my body stood up while I was driving. Physical ecstasy from how amazing it was. This album is unstoppable, talk whatever shit you want about it, you know? “Oh, it’s everywhere…”

Isaac
It’s like Master Of Puppets, there’s a reason why it’s such a popular album.

We’re talking quite a bit about Pink Floyd, what would you say is the best sequence of three records of theirs?
Isaac
Sequence? Oh.

Paul
I think it actually makes it a little easier.

Isaac
It doesn’t make it any easier!

Paul
Well, after Meddle, you have the two soundtracks for More and Obscured By Clouds which I believe were recorded in the same time period in ’71. Counting those two soundtracks as one, you get Meddle, soundtracks and Dark Side. Fucking flawless.

Morris
This band has been fucking following us on this tour. All this Dark Side stuff. Mojo magazine recently did an issue dedicated to Pink Floyd.

Paul
Specifically from ’68 to ’74.

Morris
I’ve been reading it in the van and it’s amazing. If you see it, I highly recommend you pick it up because there’s a lot of information in there that I didn’t know about. They got their authors from that time to write about their experience discovering this band, and firsthand information from the remaining members of the band, of course. David Gilmore talks about how if you look at certain aspects of Pink Floyd’s discography, leading up to Dark Side, that Dark Side actually makes sense. It didn’t come out of the blue. He talks about how if you combine Atom Heart Mother and Meddle, it actually equals Dark Side. Those are from the man himself so, you know, those three for me.

Paul
They also specify in this magazine that all the outerspace imagery is actually a metaphor for inner space and the whole time, the point was always about the pursuing of inner space, which of course, we resonate with 100%. Everyone’s like, “Oh, you guys are Sci-Fi alien Death Metal.” We’re like, “Yeah, kinda. You just hope for the aliens.” We’re just singing about inner space. You’re the ones that are gonna be really shocked when you find out what’s really going on on this planet. We’re just trying to make crazy music that gives your mental universr a space to breathe.

Do you have any favorite books about music? Biographies or music in general.
Morris
Actually, I discovered this fairly recently, while we were recording Hidden History. There’s this guy named Peter Michael Hamel and he has a book that was published called Through Music To The Self. He’s one of these New Age dudes that was playing in Kraut bands and Prog bands and eventually ditched all that to do synthesizer music based on Indian influences. He was really into Eastern scales and all that stuff so a lot of his solo albums reflect his vision of New Age through Eastern Indian scales, etc. He actually has one super long Ambient track called To The Wall Asleep which is dedicated HP Lovecraft. In this book, I haven’t finished it yet, but he talks about music theory in relation to how the body and frequencies work in the physical realm. He combines these two ideas that are pretty Western and Eastern into this ultimate theory, that’s a pretty cool book.

Isaac
I like reading stuff about the way certain albums were recorded. I really like the BEACH BOYS and Brian Wilson and stuff so the Wouldn’t It Be Nice book is actually about Pets Sounds and it’s really, really interesting.

Paul
Iron Man by Tony Iommi to me is an amazing book. All the Metal books are pretty token but they’re okay. Choosing Death is pretty cool. The Swedish Death Metal book is great. Only Death Is Real is also amazing.

Morris
The MAYHEM book is good.

Paul
Oh yeah, that’s good. The German band FAUST, there’s a book called Stretch Out Time, dedicated only from ’70 to ’75, amazing book. Any book on Kraut Rock or like Isaac was saying, books on how record were made. I don’t know what they’re called, I think it’s just The BEATLES and then a year, like ’62 to ’66. It’s this white square book. That’s amazing, it talks about little doohickeys they would do. I’m sure that there is one but I would love to read the ENYA book for the BRIAN ENO book.

Morris
David Byrne’s How Music Works is pretty good. He talks about more than just actually playing it but the business and the idea of presentation and how you’re playing to whatever level you’re at. Like when you start out, you’re playing to your friends, their friends, family members and their friends and then the clubs start reflecting your audience.

Paul
The Kim Gordon book, Girl In A Band is great. There’s a lot. Music is so fascinating. You know, it’s so much more than just a record. It’s really fascinating to read what some of these people had to do to make it happen. A LAIBACH book would be sick as fuck!

What are some of your favorite lyricist?
Paul
We met one of them yesterday actually, Luc Lemay. We were talking to him about lyrics specifically. It was probably the least attended show on the tour, but the most important guy was there. I’ve only really fanboyed a few people in my life and been actually nervous that someone is there. I couldn’t resist, I had to punish him and be like, “dude, the way that your lyrics have evolved from gore and brutal and whatnot into this introspective, spiritual, metaphysical, expansive consciousness type of thing.” You know, GORGUTS is so much more than a band, it’s like a portal into an entire different world that is right here, imperceptible to us at this time, but it’s always there. He was telling us that, you know, he natively speaks French so trying to translate these mystical lyrics in English is hard so he has to get assistance from his friend in the States. That makes it even crazier that their lyrics are so incredible. Otherwise, that band LYKATHEA AFLAME, the lyrics are incredible. MORBID ANGEL’s Formulas-era lyrics are incredible. Later DEATH. I love bands that have an expanding worldview throughout their discography. Even PINK FLOYD does that, you know?

So you enjoy progression. Seeing a band progress.
Isaac
Not just being like AMON AMARTH, whereas it’s like, this album is about Vikings…again. Or bands that are like “beer, beer, vodka, vodka, tequila. This one’s about… whatever drink we’re gonna drink this time.” Obviously, we’re interested in bands that have something at least important a little to say. It doesn’t have to be the end all, answer to the universe, whatever. I feel like the world is a crazy place so find something to talk about that’s important.

Paul
Like, you haven’t raped a nun. You don’t kill this guy burning anywhere. Make a personal connection with your own self if you’re gonna reflect that in your art. Otherwise, just keep it simple: skulls are sick, and nobody likes the dark. You know, it’s fine. That’s totally cool. But there’s so much posturing with this pseudo intellectualism for orthodox satanism, or this violent type of gore brutalism. I get it that art is an escape type of thing and you’re trying to make this representative vision of this hypothetical landscape or you know, you make a slasher movie to be gory. But the slasher movies are mostly B-movies because the priority is not to pretend to be professional, it’s just to get the point across. If you’re gonna try to be a professional, artistic, intellectually relevant band, you got to do something more than say, I killed this person or whatever.

Isaac
It’s the same thing as when the BEATLES started off being just about boy loves girl story, every single song to becoming a band that totally talks about the cosmos and the inside mind, Within You Without You and everything.

What’s the first thing that strikes you when you listen to new music? Are you looking for an instrument or anything specific like that?
Paul
It’s really hard for us to get excited about new music. That’s why the DEFEATED SANITY record is so incredible.

Morris
The context is so much greater now that we’re older and have experienced so many different genres and so many bands. Just today at the record store, I picked up this record from a band in ’71 that had a cover from the same dude that did all the YES album covers, super Psychedelic Prog look. It was a band of people made up from Zimbabwe and other parts of the world which was trying their hand at that type of Psychedelic Progressive Rock. It was a cheap record. I didn’t buy it, but I went to the listening station just to check it out because I’d never heard of this before and the cover looks cool. It was a lot of Afro Cuban beats matched with kind of jamming, Proggy Garage Psych. It was cool but there’s a reason I didn’t buy it. It was something that I thought was sick but given the context of it, I need so much more out of something like that. The album is cool but I don’t need to have it sitting there if I’m never gonna listen to it. It’s kind of hard to find that thing that really gets you going.

Isaac
It’s the same thing we were talking about before, it’s chasing the dragon. There’s been so many times where you buy it thinking, “Man, this is gonna be sick” and you put it on and go “Arghhh”. Because you spent money, you’re trying to trick yourself into liking it and then it sits on your shelf for 15 years. I think I’m much more open minded now than I was when I was younger. When I was younger, I was really specific, “I want this exact thing and if it’s not this, this sucks.” But now, especially even seeing bands for the first time, I try to go in with as open a mind as possible. Sometimes you’re like, “Wow, this is really bad!” Sometimes, it’s fine. But there is every once in a while, where you hear something for the first time -it’s rare, but it does happen- where the hair on your neck goes up and you go, “wow, what is this?”

Morris
Like that HÄLLAS record!

Paul
Our other band, Spectral Voice, the drummer Eli was showing us, they had a single on their Bandcamp and we actually listened to this single so many times they wouldn’t let us anymore. So we just had to get it, you know? *Haha* Even then, I thought it was a cool record and then we saw them live. The first time we saw them live was an outdoor festival where they’re playing this stage or we’re about to play on that stage so we saw them for a few minutes. The next time was at the Beyond The Gates festival and I straight up felt every hair on my body stand up in certain parts of the songs. I thought I was in 1973 dude, straight up. I was like, “This band, not only understands music, but life itself!” I was so transfixed. That DEFEATED SANITY Dharmata, as far as a modern Metal record, that’s probably…actually, the GORGUTS Pleiades’ Dust did that as well…but the sense that when we listen to it, you know, it’s like when you learn how to play music, it changes how you interpret other people’s music. You hear a record, and you’re like, “Okay, I don’t know what tuning this is, but I can approximate this to how it looks or how they would play this” or when you hear a band playing, you’re like, “oh, man, this is cool. I would go into this type of rhythm next.” and it’s really gratifying when they do it.

Do you think it takes away from the experience?
Paul
I think it takes away because we hyper analyzes. Someone will show us something and if it doesn’t make us wonder how they did it, in a good way, it’s not interesting.

Morris
It’s the same for any field that anyone’s involved in. It so happens to be that we’re in an artistic field that involves playing music. That’s what we know how to do and the way we do it, so we analyze other people’s perspective on how we do it.

Isaac
So if some band comes around when we’re like, “holy shit, how are they doing that?” That actually gets you excited, ’cause you’re like, “I don’t even understand this.”

Is it opposites to you, to listen to music casually as opposed to analytically?
Paul
I can do both but I typically try to listen to music and just let it happen. To trust this environment that they’re creating and then not have to think about it and just be able to enjoy it. But more often than not, I hyper analyze it and it’s really hard.

Isaac
That’s why I think it’s hard to get into newer Death Metal bands because we’re in that field. It’s hard to be listening to a band that’s putting out an album. “Oh, this is an old school Death Metal band” I’m like, “okay, here’s that riff. I know exactly what band that is.”

Paul
Actually, DEFEATED SANITY and GORGUTS are both kind of legacy bands that’s been around for 20 some odd years but one totally new band is this Australian band called FACELESS BURIAL. Their first album is pretty good but there’s a EP they put out a year or two ago called Multiversal Abbatoir. It literally sounds like Purulence and Dawn Of possession but on fire! It’s only a three piece and only the solos are overdubbed. When they play live on tour, it’s only a three piece. It was the first modern, totally current band that I was like, “Damn. Okay, I gotta step up my input right now.” Because if these guys are doing this with half as much guitar instrumentation, we really need to step it up. It’s not competitive necessarily, but to be aware that someone else is pushing it, you’re like, “Alright, I got maybe a little bit too complacent with this last one.”

Morris
You know Phil Tougas? Here’s from around here. He’s an amazing guitar player in all his projects. Fuck, man, this dude’s got solos. My solos better fucking step up. You know, I gotta crack the whip a little bit.

Paul
The newest IMMOLATION record, Atonement, is another record from an old band that’s totally relevant. It’s a completely awesome record, regardless if it had been a brand new band’s first record or if it’s a band with 30 records. There’s still plenty of room to go for Death Metal riffs that can be cool and still have interesting feelings besides just four on the floor drum beats and then this riff, four times and then this riff two times and here’s the chorus, you know? There’s still a lot to be said out there.

Do you have any hidden gem type of thing where everyone will be about that classic album but your favorite thing from that artist is a deep track or a lesser known album that flew under the radar?
Isaac
Generally speaking, I’m not into obscure stuff just because it’s obscure but just searching through, we find stuff where you’re like “oh shit! Why doesn’t everyone know about this? Everyone should!” One of my all time favorite records is Space Shanty by the band KHAN. It’s this guy Steve Hillage, he went on to be in GONG, also great band, and then he had a pretty illustrious solo career but Space Shanty is probably one of my all time favorite Prog records. It’s insane. It has people from the Canterbury scene and Van Hagen. It’s just one of those things where, only the nerdiest of Prog geeks that are on forums know about it. That’s where you find that stuff.

Paul
That Italian band SENSATIONS’ FIX. On their first record, they were a fully instrumental band and then became a Prog band and they would have been a Kraut Rock band, but they’re Italian. When we were in Austin, we saw this reissue for their second album called Portable Madness, which I got randomly in a record store in Salem, Oregon in 2008 or 2009 for $30 or $40, which was a lot back then. And they’ve only been reissued now for the first time and it’s basically super imperial, almost Symphonic Progressive Rock. It’s only a three piece but there’s no vocals and each guy has a synth as well as his instrument, similar also to that TARANTULA HAWK band. It’s a bunch of Crust Punks from Oakland in the late 90’s, early 2000’s and they have two records, one self-titled and one untitled. The green one, which I believe is the untitled one is like heavy, deep, Psychedelic Prog Crust, all instrumental, and nobody knows about it, that’s like a $4 record. Speaking of $4 records, also the IL SANGUE record, In Still Desolation on Parasitic Records, 2005, I have like five of them and nobody buys this record. It’s $5 everywhere. It’s so cult, the dude who put it out doesn’t even know where they’re from. It’s amazing, Blackened Funeral Death Doom dark Ambient Drone textures. It’s so fucking sick. Oh my god. It’s only 500 copies and it’s still 5 bucks.