Incantation, who have been around since the distant year of 1989, have been a constant gourmet treat for fans of dark, dirty death metal since their debut album "Onward to Golgotha" in 1992. Fortunately, according to the motto "what goes around comes around", the band's qualities seem to be getting around more and more, so that the latest album "Sect of Vile Divinities" can already be considered the biggest commercial success in the band's history.The author of this blog is a die-hard follower of the band, and so the opportunity had finally come to talk to band founder and scene veteran John Mc Entee, who plays guitar and is responsible for the vocals, about various things. The frontman turned out to be a very thoughtful and reflective guy.
All is good here. I
now live in Greensboro, North Carolina for the last few years and it’s totally amazing down
here. For me, the lockdown has been ok. I’m kinda a loner so I don’t really
like to be around other people unless it’s friends or horror or metal people.
For the band, it has been great, we didn’t know what to expect releasing the
“Sect of Vile Divinities” album a-mist the pandemic, but it ended up being a
major success for us, which was super cool.
I know it’s been a difficult time for almost everyone over this pandemic and I have sadly even lost a few friends due to it. It's just my personality to want to make the best out of any situation. I’m also very fortunate to have an amazing home life and that really makes everything seem great.
Now let´s come to the latest album "Sect of vile divinities", which has become a killer album again! As I see it, it has received exclusively positive reactions from the press and the fans, right?
Yes, it's been overwhelming for sure. Like I said before, we really had no idea how it would do coming out during the pandemic. The response has been great, it’s crazy that it has become our best-selling record in our long history. It's just mind-blowing. We have the best and most loyal fans out there. We just really can’t wait to get out on stage and perform for everyone in the future.
The new album also contains relatively many
slow, doomy parts, which generally suit you very well. What do you think?
Apart from that, I have the impression that Incantation is one of the bands
that got the well-deserved recognition only in the course of the last years.
Although Incantation has always been known to every death metal fan, here in
Germany primarily names like Morbid Angel, Deicide, Death, Cannibal Corpse or
Obituary have been synonymous with high class death metal. Meanwhile there are
a lot of people who prefer a band like Incantation to the mentioned example
bands! Also your style of death metal, the rotten, dirty, worn out - actually
the essence of death metal - became more popular only in the last years, I
think. What's your opinion?
The songs are what they are. We didn’t really think that we wanted it to be a doomy album or a fast album necessarily. We just wanted to make the best songs we can. We wanted them to be as heavy and aggressive as possible but at the end of the day, the song is the most important thing. The song itself has to mean something to us.
Yes, I understand, we have
never wanted to be like those bands. They are all great bands, but we are just
different, and we want to express ourselves the way we feel most honest. In
death metal there are no rules, it's just about expressing your inner most dark
feelings. We have our own vision and at times the masses didn’t always get it.
But I think over the last few years more and more death metal fans understand
what we are trying to express with our music. It’s like the scene caught up
with us. To be fair, we have done great throughout the years and seen much
success but I think the audience is just much bigger for what we do now than it
was back in the mid 2000’s and late 90s. It's great to see that people are
really embracing raw death metal again.
The technical aspect was never that important to you, I think overly technical music and good death metal are almost automatically mutually exclusive, with a few exceptions. In an article about Incantation I read that Michael Amott (guitarist of Carcass, Carnage, Arch Enemy) made a derogatory comment about your album "Onward to Golgotha“. How did it come to this, to this conversation?
Hahaha look,
everyone has their own opinions. And we are a death metal band, we don’t expect
everyone to like it. You are really doing death metal wrong if everyone likes
it, haha. I don’t remember Michael ever saying anything good or bad about
“Onward to Golgotha” or Incantation. But maybe he thinks it, haha, I really
don’t know. I only met Mike a few times and we never really hit it off. Don't
have an opinion on him either way.
Chris Amott on the other hand, we were pen pals for a while, he has stated to me many times he was a fan of Incantation. He seems like a real nice guy. But I haven’t heard from him in a long time. I just hope he is doing well.
What do you think, when will you be able to tour
again? Apart from that, what do you associate with Germany when you remember
concerts here? Special memories or places? Have you ever played in Cologne?
We are still hoping
we can tour in 2021, but it’s not looking good at the moment. Things are still
very up in the air with how the borders will be open and stuff like that. The governments
don’t really have a solid game plan that I have seen yet.
Germany is a special place for us. A lot of our influences are from the 80s thrash bands, especially Kreator, Sodom and Destruction. Germany had a pioneering metal scene back then for sure. Germany is an amazing place for metal, there are so many diehard fans that we get to see every time we return. It's like a metal family reunion. Party San is one of our favorite fest to play along with NRW Deathfest, Chaos Descends, also back in the day we played Fuck the Commerce a bunch of times. There are so many great times in Germany for sure.
I do remember playing
Cologne back in 1994 on our tour with Sinister and Deadhead, we had a great
time hanging out with the guys in the band Blood that came to the show. We have
had many more great times playing Cologne since then as well. I think the last
time we played close to Cologne was back on the Bolt Thrower and Morgoth tour (took place in 2014-author's note).
Again, it was a blast!
Hmm, wow, that is a
hard one to answer. There are so many great tours that we have been on. There
are a lot of early tours that have been amazing for sure. But I will go with
our most recent US tour we played with Morbid Angel and Watain. It was the
perfect tour for us, and every show was just amazing. The band sounded great
and we had a great time hanging out with all the bands and fans.
There are always bands
that you just don’t get along with for one reason or another, but I don’t think
it’s important to name them. I know on my end there are no hard feelings, there
are always things that people are going through that you might not know about,
and we are all about mending bridges, not burning them. You would have to do
something pretty bad for me to be that mad to bash a band in public. Even then
it would be wrong on my part.
We had some problems in
South America back around 2008 or 2009. But even though we worked with a false promoter. I’d still take the blame for not heeding the warning signs. So my
ignorance is partially to blame.
Since you also play longer tours, how can you combine that with work? Or is at least for parts of the band Incantation a part of the livelihood?
I can’t make a
living totally on Incantation, but I just try to find a way to make the most of
the little bit of money we make. But to be fair, the expenses of playing in a
touring band are pretty high, even on a small level. For a few years I wasn’t working besides the
band, but I’m slowly getting back into printing again. It's something I really
enjoy doing. So look out sometime in the near future, we will be putting up a
website at www.ibexmooncollection.com. It will have some cool stuff
for metal heads, horror fans and just people that like dark stuff.
Let's move on to the sideprojects: Does Funerus actually still exist - even if no one from Incantation plays there anymore?
As far as I know, Funerus still exists, but I haven’t been a part of the band for a while, so I really don’t know what they are doing these days.
And I saw that you, John, have a new project with Bob Bagchus and Eric Daniels (both ex-Asphyx / (ex)-Soulburn) named Beast of Revelation, among others, as well as a relatively new band called Tribe of Pazuzu. What can you tell us about these bands or projects? Do you feel that you are not busy enough with Incantation? And would you be interested in playing something else than death metal or metal in general and try something completely different?
Both the Beast of Revelations and Tribe of Pazuzu are not really full-time bands for me. I had a great time working with both bands and hope to for as long as possible. But it's not like having another full-time band like Incantation. Both give me other ways to express myself in a different way than with Incantation. I’m proud to be a part of both projects for sure!
I don’t really think I would do something different than some sort of metal. But if I ever felt that I needed to do something outside of the death metal realm I would do it for sure to get the musical vision out of me.
Incantation had a lot of line-up changes during the decades, I would say above average. What do you think was the reason for that, what were or could have been the reasons for the high fluctuation?
Overall, we have been pretty stable lineup wise over the last twelve years. The
only changes we had was for the guitar slot. But now things are going great
with Luke Shively on guitar. We have been touring with him for over five years
now, so it was a seamless transition having him in the band. Really, things are
going better than ever. All the guys in the band now are like my brothers and I
really enjoy working with them.
In the
past there were many different reasons for lineup changes. I take blame for
some, also, some were just natural, some were just so the band can continue to
be itself. Lineup changes are very fragile and personal issues that most bands
have to deal with. It’s not fair to anybody to disregard them or try to box
them all into one reason or another why they're no longer with the band. All I
could say is, things are amazing with the band and lineup now, and I'm so happy
with where the band has come to, throughout the years. I’m extremely proud to
be a part of such an amazing journey.
On your homepage you write that there was once an Incantation TV commercial? Can you tell us more about it?
Yes, I wish we had a copy still of the commercial. But honestly it was really
nothing. Haha, it was a commercial for, I think Vans, and had a dude doing
a jump over some stuff and they played the intro to the song "Uprising heresy".
It was only a ten second long commercial, which was only used on
VHS-tapes about skateboarding. But it’s a fun thing to have been a part of your
history, haha.
Do you have any insider tips regarding cool, unknown death metal for the readers of Systematic Desensitization zine, be it local bands or worldwide? What can you tell us about the scene in Pennsylvania? I think of bands beside Incantation and the other already mentioned to current and long faded acts such as Mythic, Acheron, Creation is Crucifixion, Derketa or Circle of dead children...
Yes, PA had/have a lot of great metal bands, but I don’t live in Pennsylvania
anymore, I live in Greensboro, NC now and totally love it down here. I don’t
know a lot about the metal scene here yet, but there are some great bands for
sure. One of my faves are False Prophet, there are also some other great
classic bands like Confessor and C.O.C... Like the rest of the world, we had a
lock down for quite a while, so I haven’t been able to see a lot of local
bands. But I’m sure now that things are opening up, I'll be able to check out
the local talents.
Yes, I’m still friends with Mortician, they are all great guys. I haven’t
talked to them about new music so I have no idea. But I do know they have some
shows coming up. I’m sure when they are ready they will release something new.
The last words belong to you!
Thanks so much for the support. The response for the new album “Sect of Vile Divinities” has been nothing but stunning. We are so happy people enjoy it. We can’t wait to get back on the road and play for all the deathbangers out there. Check out www.incantation.com and our social media pages to get updates on what’s going on with the band. Also, there will be a new website to buy some of my merch, printing work, along with other things my family is involved with at www.ibexmooncollection.com.