Interview

Incantation Recounts Lineup History And Details New Album

Along with groups such as Acheron and Deicide, Incantation summoned the Devil into death metal. Tremolo riffs, doomy passages, blasting drums, harmonic squeals and guttural vocals animated infernal tales of heresy and hell on essential early nineties death metal releases “Onward to Golgotha” (1992) and “Mortal Throne of Nazarene” (1994). These early releases also helped spearhead Relapse Records. Craig Pillard produced earth-churning lows in the creation of the most vile lyrics on these albums as well as “Upon the Throne of Apocalypse” (1995) as well as the “Forsaken Mourning of Angelic Anguish” (1997) EP.

The Chasm’s Daniel Corchado moved from Mexico to be in the band and brought a higher register to the band’s vocal department on their next recording “Diabolical Conquest” (1998). From there the group experienced instability in singers. A parade of vocalists marched through including Duane Morris, Tom Stevens, Mike Saez and Vincent Crowley. Many of these singers were sessions members who were filling in while John McEntee learned the position (while also playing guitar). Once McEntee was comfortable in his new role, the band also brought in Sonny Lombardozzi on lead guitar.

The last eleven years the group has experienced a stable lineup and has released more dark delightful material in such albums as “Primordial Domination” (2006), “Vanquish in Vengeance (2012) and most recently “Dirges of Elysium” (2014). The group is currently working on a new album and played a monumental show with Autopsy in Chicago. On the third day of Phil Anselmo’s Housecore Horror Film Festival, Incantation prepared to once again to spill the blood with Autopsy.

Members John McEntee (guitar/vocals), Sonny Lombardozzi (lead guitar), Kyle Severn (He’s got a mustache-drums) and Chuck Sherwood (bass) laughed as they recalled band history, including playing one show with two vocalists, and gave the lowdown on new material.

Rex_84: How do you feel about playing a horror film festival?

Kyle Severn: It’s fucking awesome! It’s the best thing I’ve done, ever! No, it’s really cool.

John McEntee: It’s good. I don’t know if it’s that good. It’s a really cool thing they’ve got here, bringing the horror and music together, and we’re excited to be a part of it. We play tonight. It should be cool.

Rex_84: Do you think Incantation fits with the horror theme?

Chuck Sherwood: Sure, why not? I mean I’m sure we’ve scared some people with our music. I’ve seen people running out of our shows before “What the fuck?”

McEntee: Just because we’re not a splatter band doesn’t mean that we’re not dark and evil. That’s a genre of horror movies, right?

Rex_84: Yeah, satanic horror.

McEntee: Yeah, satanic horror movies. That’s kind of our niche, you know?

Rex_84: Are you going to watch any films or take in any bands?

Severn: Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to watch any of the movies or bands.

McEntee: I was trying to watch one of the bands.

Severn: I was trying to and my flight was delayed getting into town. It kind of fucked me over. I’m pretty unhappy about that. So far today, we got here when the doors opened and we’ve been doing interviews all day.

McEntee: I haven’t watched any of the movies, but I saw that they had “Evil Dead” playing. That would be pretty cool to see, but I’ve already seen it 400 times. Maybe it would be cool to see with other people. I saw it in the movies. This was Friday. You weren’t even here yet because of your flight (talking to Severn).

Severn: Didn’t they have a panel or something?

McEntee: I don’t know if anybody was there with it, but I thought that was a great movie. I liked “Evil Dead.”

Rex_84: Bruce Campbell has his own show, now, too.

Sherwood: It’s cool. It’s what you would expect. It’s cheesy as fuck, but it’s pretty good. It’s pretty gory. It’s all CGI, which is kind of a bummer.

McEntee: I like the first one where the bodies and gore were all clay pieces, but it still scared me at the time. It was pretty intimidating. When “Evil Dead” came out, it was like wow, I’m really getting to see something really fucked up. This is not like “Friday the 13th.”

Sherwood: There is something serious about the first one. Everything about it is very dark. There are no jokes, one-liners or nothing. Everybody dies.

Rex_84: It was the second one that got jokey.

McEntee: Yeah, it was funny, too, though when his hand was attacking him. That’s a classic part.

Rex_84: Did you ever notice the book he put on top of the wastebasket containing his hand?

Sherwood: “Farewell to Arms,” yeah!

All: (Laughs)

Rex_84: Are you on tour right now or just doing select shows.

Severn: At the moment, we just did this one as a one-off. We’re working on a new record right now, so we’re kind of at the tail-end of touring for “Dirges of Elysium.”
We’ll do a few things, but something like this we obviously couldn’t pass up. We want to move forward to the next record, right now.

Rex_84: Where are you at on the record? What do you have done?

Severn: We have some stuff done. We’re moving along. We’re in the middle of it. I would say a quarter into it. I can’t quite say the middle yet, but we’ve got some progress.

McEntee: Yeah, we’re suppose to be at the end of it now, but for some reason, we’re kind of at the beginning, beginning part of it.

Severn: We’ve got two songs done. I’ve still got a lot of drum tracking to do. I’ve got some done. I’ve got some guitars done, so there has been a lot of demoing we’ve done for it. We like to demo and play them out, practice some and listen back, change things, play again and listen back until we’re comfortable with them. When we feel they’re set in stone, we start laying the tracks to them. We’re at that stage.

McEntee: We’re at some stage of it. Just not sure what.

Severn: Lyrics are done. The title is done.

Rex_84: What are some of the concepts/themes in the lyrics? Who writes the lyrics?

Severn: Chuck writes the lyrics.

Sherwood: There are a lot of different themes. It’s all either occultism, heathen religions, the darker sides of history and, believe it or not, dream scapes. I wrote about three songs, recently, from dreams.

Rex_84: Do you wake up and write it down?

Sherwood: Yeah and I piece it together into something more tangible that will transfer over well, so people can correlate what’s going on.

McEntee: I never remember my dreams. He remembers them and writes them down. Even if I have some kind of weird nightmare or something, I’ll wake up, remember for two seconds and then it’s gone. It’s hard to remember. I guess it’s kind of cool. Maybe it sucks because you don’t want to remember what happened.

Sherwood: If it’s a really traumatic dream then it’s lingering for a reason, but with these there is no base in anything. That’s why I’m so drawn to it. I want to know where it came from.

Severn: Keep in mind, he watches a zillion horror movies.

Sherwood: Fair enough, and I also have an interest in a lot of obscure things, but it doesn’t transfer that same way. That’s why it goes through something darker.

Rex_84: Do things you read and watch go into your dreams?

Sherwood: No, I think it will if it’s something you can correlate with, but these don’t.

Severn: That’s just it. All the movies are just a big smorgasbord. You wake up from dreaming of the movie because that actually has structure from parts of the twenty movies you watched just today. You take a little from all that, wake up and make your own movie out of it.

McEntee: Werezombieshark. I was trying to help him with his next movie. He did the “After Party Massacre” movie and for the next one I say he should do a zombiewereshark. A werewolf-shark hybrid but a zombie at the same time.

Severn: Trying to take it to the next level of our film making career. Today we figured that Jason Voorhees ended out in space. I don’t know how “Children of the Corn” got into outer space, but their up in space growing corn and Jason is chopping it with a machete.

McEntee: And the kids from “Children of the Corn” are controlling Jason.

Severn: They’re grown up now so it’s kind of like grandparents of the corn. They’re kettle controlling Jason to cut the corn down.

McEntee: Isn’t Jason sent to another planet? I don’t know how that movie ended.

Sherwood: The corn kettle, so it’s grandpas of the kettle corn.

McEntee: Product of Voorhees. Are you writing this down (asked Sherwood)?

Rex_84: How did the show in Chicago with Autopsy go? You’re playing with them again tonight.

McEntee: It was great. It’s always great to play with Autopsy. I’ve been friends with them since ’88. As a band, I’ve been friends with them since the early nineties. That was the first time we toured with them. It’s a lot of fun to play shows with them. It such a great old school kind of thing. They just get up there and have a good time. They just brutalize. It’s really cool.

Severn: They do what they do and they do it great. We work together well as far as music styles. For a fan going to see it, what other two bands could you ask for?

McEntee: We’ve always got along with them. We plays shows with them that just works. I get along well with them.

Severn: We’re doing it again tonight.

Rex_84: Incantation is one of the most guttural vocal bands and you’ve featured several voice monsters like Craig Pillard, Daniel Corchado, Duane Morris and Vincent Crowley. You’ve really blazed a trail for this style of vocals. How do you feel about all the bands that try to emulate what you do?

McEntee: I like guttural vocals, but they still have to have some passion behind it. That’s why things didn’t work out so well with Duane Morris because he just really sucked at doing vocals. Guitar-wise, he was good. I know, I’m just being an asshole. I’m just teasing you, Duane. We always pushed for vocalists that have passion in their vocals, and it’s really important. It’s not always the tone of the voice, it’s the feeling you have in it. If you listen to Corchado on “Diabolical Conquest,” he’s not as low as Craig Pillard or Duane, but he has passion in his vocals. That’s the thing that is more important. The vocal low tones are great and they fit in with it, but bands that come around that just do the low without the feeling…some will do well with super high pig squeals, but they won’t do either one with feeling. They just go really low, really high, really low, really high, instead of trying to get the passion. You still have to say something and you still have to make some kind of feeling with your vocals.

Rex_84: How about Tom Stevens? How did he fit in with Incantation’s style?

McEntee: He got in because Daniel Corchado quit in the middle of the tour and he was our merch guy, so we gave the merch guy a chance. (laughs) Nah, we knew before the tour that Daniel was probably going to leave the band and I think it was even set that he was going to leave for a couple of shows and we, Rob Yench was playing bass for us at the time suggested Tom Stevens in the band. He did a good job in the situation. Give him credit. He stepped up to the plate and we had a smooth transition. We played one day with Daniel Corchado on vocals and guitar and the next day we had Tom Stevens on guitar and vocals. I remember the Morbid Angel guys, who were on tour with us, watching us and thinking “This is going to be an absolute disaster! They’re changing guitar and vocals in the middle of the tour.” I remember Erik Rutan and Steve Tucker were kind of like, “huh? How in the hell did they do that?” We really appreciate what he did for us. In the long term, he wasn’t the right person for the band. He helped us out in a rut and we did some good tours with him. It’s just that most of the time he was jamming with us, we were really unstable as a band. He was in a real awkward time in our band history. Probably his shining moment was filling in on the Morbid tour because he did a flawless job, really. We are definitely grateful for him doing that. If I remember correctly it was right before we went to Canada. No, it was the Milwaukee Metal Fest.

Severn: Daniel wanted to play with his other band, The Chasm. At that point, we were like “if you’re going to take off, the tour has to keep going, so however the routing went, that’s where Daniel stopped. I think he did Milwaukee Metal Fest.

McEntee: The next day we were in Thunder Bay, Canada when we did our first show because it wasn’t even with you (points to Severn). You didn’t even play. We had Chris Dora on drums and Tom Stevens on guitar, so we had half of our lineup switched for that show because Kyle had a DWI or something like that. We ended up playing that show and we had a friend come out to play the Canadian shows. Chris Dora, he played in Decrepit, Ringworm, Soulless. He filled in for that show. That’s part of why Erik Rutan and Steve Tucker were surprised because half of our band was different at that show and we still did really good. It was really crazy. To add to the lunacy of things, when we were jamming with Duane, Duane left the band on a tour, too. He left in the middle of the tour. We basically knew he was going to leave, so we had Daniel Corchado come up. We taught Daniel the songs while Duane was still there and Duane knew he was going to get replaced once he went to Cleveland, and in Cleveland I think we played with both vocalists at the same show. We played half a set with Duane and then had Daniel Corchado. We had a very strange work relationship. The thing was that Duane came in and helped out after “Mortal Throne of Nazarene” album came released. It was Duane, Kyle and this dude, Randy [Scott]. We did a tour with Grave. Things went pretty well, but we just realized at the time that our chemistry with Duane wasn’t working out so well, but we did try to work with him so more because he showed real interest and really wanted to be in the band. I knew the dude was really metal. He was really into it and we really wanted it to work out with him, but it was just one of those things that couldn’t work out. For some reason, some people just don’t work out. It was crazy because Daniel was filling in at the middle of a tour.

Severn: We were in Mexico and the whole thing with Duane was this isn’t going to work. Duane knows he’s going to leave. We know he’s leaving. Daniel is a friend so we just brought Daniel with us. We brought him to Cleveland, to the States.

McEntee: He finished up the rest of the tour.

Severn: And he did the rest year and a half.

McEntee: He did up to “Diabolical” and then he left in the middle of a tour and then that’s when Tom Stevens took over. We hope to prevent problems like that happening ever again. If I leave in the middle of a tour and we need another vocalist, it won’t work out so well.

Rex_84: Is that why you took over vocals?

McEntee: Yeah, I was sick of going through so many people. The real problem with vocals is we want people to express our vision. Kyle and I have an idea how we want to vocals to be, how we want them to sound, how we want the vocals to come across. We’re getting these people into the band and we’re trying to mold them into what we want, instead of having them be their selves and doing it because they want to do it. Half of the people we jammed out with, even the people we got along with there were always things. Mikey [Saez] was great. We loved Mikey. He was a great guy to jam out with, but we were always getting on his case. “Get into it more!” And he would be like, “no, no, no.” He was a great dude. We really liked jamming with him but he had a different vision that’s why when I tried to do it, it was difficult but it was easy because Kyle and I didn’t have to keep trying to coach people.

Severn: The energy we spent trying to teach people how to sing, it’s like, man, just do it yourself!

McEntee: The problem was there was the time between when Mikey left and I wasn’t ready to do vocals, probably a year and a half to two years we had to have numerous session vocalists come in. We just put out the “Blasphemy” album and we had the tour for it, and I wasn’t ready. I didn’t want to go on tour until I was properly ready. It wasn’t just doing vocals. It was doing vocals and guitar. I first had to learn how to do vocals. I had to learn how to sing in the right tone. Then, I had to learn how to play guitar and do it. It took a long time and fortunately we had other people fill in and it made for some interesting combinations for the band. It was kind of a bummer because we never had any intentions, we had Belial from Lethal Prayer. He was a nice guy, but the intention was never for him to be in the band, but he did our tour with Cannibal Corpse.

Severn: He was a sessions guy, so he understood John’s working on being the vocalist. He’s not quite there yet. Come help us out and do the tours. That’s how it was with him. That’s how it was with Vince [Crowley].

McEntee: Yeah, I think it was those two tours, six months or something like that.

Severn: Vince did a U.S. tour and a European tour.

McEntee: Belial did the one Cannibal run.

McEntee: Then when I started doing vocals, that’s when we got Sonny [Lombardozzi] to do guitar.

Rex_84: Going back to when you first started, you’re from New York, right?

McEntee: Jersey. Just so everybody knows, the Statue of Liberty is on the Jersey side of the river. It’s not on the New York side. New York gets credit for it. Also, the New Jersey Jets and Jersey Giants both play in New Jersey. We get no respect.

Rex_84: I was wondering about the scene in the Northeast, about some of the bands you played with like Suffocation and Immolation. Were there clubs you could play shows in the New York/New Jersey area?

McEntee: Yeah, there were clubs. We had on in Jersey called Gee Willikers. We used to play with Gorephobia, Immolation. I think we played with Nuclear Death there. Chances in upstate New York.

Severn: Was that a white building?

McEntee: You’re talking about Sessions. Sessions was not a good place to play. They did have shows there, but it wasn’t that good. We had a place, our home place called Studio One in Newark, New Jersey. That was where we really got the opportunity to open up for a lot of bands. We really got our chops down as a band. There were a good amount of bands and clubs. There were a bunch in New York, too. A lot of the ones in New York switched around over time. They wouldn’t stay around. In Jersey we had Studio One that was pretty stable and Gee Willikers was pretty stable. Obsession and Randolph’s were stable too, but that guy had to have been part of a drug cartel, mafia or something because there was no way he was making money. His shows were always a disaster. Even for good shows. I remember seeing the Unleashed/Malevolent Creation/Cannibal Corpse show there and it still wasn’t that good. It wasn’t that packed. But it was stupid because it was only about twenty miles away from where they play in New York City, so it was just too close.

Rex_84: Long before Maryland Death Fest there was the Michigan Death Fest. That was one of the earliest extreme metal festivals in the States, long before Maryland Death Fest. How important was the Michigan Deathfest in the early years

McEntee: It was a big deal. The first time we played there, I don’t even know if our album was out yet, but it was a great show with Autopsy, Repulsion. I think Disharmonic Orchestra played. I can’t remember but it was really a great bill. It was a great opportunity for us. I think Mythic played, too. It was a good thing that Sandy Newton was doing at the time. It sucked because it was at that place Todd’s in Hamtramck and it was so crappy outside. I remember people’s cars being broken into. It was a really ghetto area. It was kind of a shame. It was a nice club, but they didn’t have good security or something. Then we played again. I think it was the one in Saginaw or Flint. I can’t remember, but it was one of those places north of Detroit. Incan and Mortician were headlining. I can’t remember the other bands. It was ok. It was good for Detroit. Detroit was always, at that time for us, hit or miss. It was kind of a bummer because both Detroit clubs were not in a good area. Blondies is in a real bad area. Harpos is in a really bad area. Todd’s was in a crappy area. All of these places were in the worst parts of town. I don’t think a lot of people wanted to risk coming out to a show. For there, it would have been better to have the shows out of town. Probably would have gotten more people there. There were a lot of problems with the city back then. A lot of crime.

Severn: It’s a little different now. The scene is different now.

McEntee: Yeah, we played there the last few years and there are better places, cleaned up areas.

Rex_84: Not Harpos, though.

All: No.

McEntee: Where was that place we played last year, the festival?

Sherwood: There was a bowling alley in a medical area around a hospital or clinic or something.

McEntee: It was downtown and a lot of people came out. It was a much better scene. Then there was that other place we played, the little fest [Berserker Fest], where Poison Idea played. Those guys that did that were pretty cool. They were trying to do something good for the Detroit scene. What was the name of that place [The Loving Touch & WAB.]?

An avid metal head for over twenty years, Darren Cowan has written for several metal publications and attended concerts throughout various regions of the U.S.