Interview with John McEntee and Luke Shively of Incantation: We have 10 new songs for the new album + some other doomy songs for the different release!

21/07/2022 Video Interviews Share

Minions! We interviewed John McEntee and Luke Shively of Incantation at the Exit Festival. This is actually one of the funniest interviews I ever did. So make sure to check out the entire video!

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We started the discussion with the band’s upcoming release. Other than talking about the new album, John McEntee mentioned that he was working on a different, doomzy project: We just actually set it to get mixed, a few days before the tour or so. We have most of it done for a while. We were just kind of getting the loose ends done. We weren’t in a super rush because we didn’t get to tour barely for the Sect of the Vile Divinites album but we really wanted to get it done before we went on this long trek, because we have Europe in July, the US in August, South America in September and we have some stuff in October. So we figured, if we get it now, there’s time for it to go through all…getting the artwork and all that crap done. We have 10 songs for that and we have some other...we recorded some other doom songs during the pandemic, we’re gonna do for a different release, later on. We have, I don’t know, maybe another 10, I don’t know how many. I never really counted them. We worked a lot of music over the pandemic because we had time to do it, you know…

When asked what the sickest Incantation album cover is, John McEntee mentioned Mortal Throne of Nazarene and Dirges of Elysium:

We then talked about the New Jersey metal scene. Amongst the sea of bands, John also mentioned his previous band – Revenant (Prophecies of a Dying World) and Ripping Corpse (Dreaming with the Dead). He too mentioned that they were close to bands like Immolation, Suffocation, Mortician, Apparition, and Goreaphobia. John stated: I was very fortunate to grow up in a place where there is a lot of killer bands, I mean, a lot of killer thrash metal bands are from there too. Overkill, Carnivore, Whiplash, Anthrax even comes from there... So many bands... S.O.D...We just had such a great scene, even for hardcore we had bands like Agnostic Front, Straight Ahead, Cro-Mags, the list goes on and on...even punk, The Ramones, you know...I had a pretty cool area to grow up as far as just having access to so much stuff. You know, Misfits are from New Jersey…a lot of great stuff to pull from and kinda get inspiration from early on…

John said that Paul Ledney, the band’s original drummer came up with the band’s name – Incantation:

Well, actually, Paul Ledney came up with the name of the band… When first we were starting, he said: “I have this name Incantation, we should use that!” And at first, I was like: eeeh, I don’t know. I was like…You know, ‘cause I was really good friends with Immolation…I was like: Immolation, Incantation...I don’t know…maybe it’s too much alike but I said OK, we’ll keep it, until maybe we will try to come up with something better, we will keep that name until we get something better, and I guess nothing better came around because we kept it. And it’s a good name now, but it’s weird. I’m always really bad at picking up names…Even album titles and stuff, I’m always questionable about it until it actually happens. Sect of Vile Divinities, when were coming up with it, I don’t know if it’s good or bad, I don’t really know… it’s ok…But now I couldn’t think of any other title for it. It seems like perfect. By the time I was like, maybe this title sucks, I don’t know… Luke added: I think it’s awesome. I think it’s pretty original. It’s hard to find an original name these days, especially one-word...

Then I mentioned that Incantation started the avalanche of all of these ATION bands, like Immolation, Suffocation, etc. John explained: I know Incantation wasn’t done on purpose, it happened to have ATION at the end but yeah, it’s crazy ‘cause at that time, we had Immolation, Incantation, Suffocation, Malevolent Creation…We always joke about, it would be great to do a ATION tour you know, with all four ATION bands. That would be sick as f*uck. That would be one metal freaking show! Luke commented: I would be down for that 100%! Let’s do it! (laughs).

Then John McEntee discussed the cover of Death’s Scream Bloody Gore that Incantation did back in the day. I’m a big Chuck Schuldiner fan but I like his early material more, I think Luke is probably more well-rounded with Chuck Schuldiner as far as liking, but a quick little thing about Scream Bloody Gore, we did that song because people were not recognizing Chuck for his death metal, finding death metal at that time. He would be a godfather of death metal I would say. He was so known for his more technical stuff at that time and we were like, let’s do a cover of old fu*king Death song, to remind people, this guy also had a really important part in what we do, not just an important part of what more technical bands do, you know. Luke’s definitely more into like, say the later stuff. Only over the last couple of years have I started appreciating some of it. I always had some kind of a roadblock like, I just wasn’t interested past a certain point. But you know, it’s all really good in just different ways.

When asked Luke what his favorite Death album is, Luke said: Hopefully nobody throws stones at me but Symbolic is probably my favorite. It was kind of my gateway... It was kind of a blueprint for me growing up, starting my own band and playing guitar and doing vocals, Chuck was big inspiration. I liked more of that melodic and big songwriting...And the drums with Gene, just a bit more technicality, I really like that...

Then we changed our discussion towards religion, with songs like Dominant Ethos and Fury’s Manifesto that criticize all monotheistic religions. John commented: I wouldn't say it’s a crusade against religion, We just…First of all, early on, we were really influenced by bands like Possessed, Venom, Bathory, Celtic Frost.. they really had that anti-religious vibe and for us it was really natural to utilize that. ‘Cause that was something that I kind of… I agree with that “religion sucks” or whatever. At that time, I was just more against Christianity, because that is what I knew at the time. As Older I get, I start to learn that all religions really suck. And we just kind of, started piling on, ok! It’s time to bash other religions, ‘cause everybody knows Christianity sucks. I wouldn’t say, it’s not even really a crusade, it’s just something that I believe in and I think us in the band believe that religion sucks or whatever but…I believe in people having the freedom to believe in what the f*ck they want. I really don’t care if people are religious or not, I just don’t like if when they are as**oles about it or condescending about it, it’s like, have your beliefs, live your life to your beliefs, let me live my life to my beliefs, and everybody’s cool. You know, when they try to push religious agendas on decisions that’s when it’s a problem.

And then I mentioned that Ross Dolan of Immolation told me that the reason they hated religion is that they were attending Catholic schools as kids. And out of the blue John McEntee replied: No, I wasn’t like, touched as a little boy by the priest or anything, you know… (And at this point we all died laughing :D) Well, that would make you hate religion I think you know… I went to like CCD classes and stuff like that but I didn’t go to Catholic school or anything. I learned to hate Christianity on my own, pretty much.

When asked why he has the biggest grudge against Catholicism and the pope in the lyrics, John McEntee explained: That’s just because it’s easier to bash religions you know because for a long time we didn’t really know enough about other religions. To be fair, they are all bad and they are all good if they are done in the right way. If people would just be religious and just do their thing, it does not fuc*ing matter. But it’s more like, I personally had to deal with people looking down on you or trying to tell you you are doing things wrong because you are not following the Catholic way, or the Christian way or whatever, so that’s why that’s more emphasized but it’s not like… If I grew up with another religion and they would be the a**holes, I would be bitching more about that. You bitch about what you know…

Then we had a little chat about the song “The Fallen Priest”, or to be more precise, about the line: I mock the church at 3 AM. John stated: That was Kyle’s lyric. That’s a good one, It’s a good song. I haven’t played that one for a little bit. We then discussed songs like “Rites of the Locusts”. He explained: “The locusts are like religious people being locusts. Religious people are destroying everything in their path because of their religion. You know, like locusts clean out everything. And you know, locusts have a connection of being in the Bible too, but it’s more like the people are the actual locusts. They are screwing everything up because of… they can’t, they believe their religion has to be the only right way so they will destroy everything else and that sucks.

Then we had a discussion about the song “Xipe Totec”, “Elysium (Eternity is Nigh)”. We also had a little chat about the song “Impending Diabolical Conquest” and the line Salvation, Sombre Ecstasy and whether it had something to do with Gorguts’ song “The Art of Sombre Ecstasy”. Since Luke was wearing Considered Dead T-Shirt, we talked about his favorite Gorguts albums.

When asked whether the world was more religious when they started in 1992 or now, John said: It’s hard to say. I think in the US it was more religious back then, maybe around the world people are more religious conscious now or something. I don’t know. It’s hard to say. I think people are less religious now than it was then. When we started, the stuff we were doing was super provocative. I mean, we even had a 700 club have like, our album was one of the albums not to let your kids have in the States and stuff like that. They were showing like, albums that were just like really bad for people….kids’ religious or mental health but back then, it was like, at least in the States, really controversial to mock religion so openly so that was part of the fun of doing it back then because we were pushing limits and you know, every once in a while you get like protestors or something… When asked whether some of the religious protestors stopped some of the Incantation’s shows, he said: To go that far, we had one show. It wasn’t canceled but it was turned from all-ages to a 21+ show. That was in Guadalajara, Mexico. That was like 1994-5. At that time they had the PAN government and that’s like a more religious-based government in Guadalajara and they tried to stop the show, and they couldn’t stop it but it was really funny because they had some kind of like.. I can’t remember if they had some news clip or something, but someone was telling me that they were letting people know not to let their kids go to the show because there’s gonna be satanic orgies and stuff. And I was like, f*ck that would be awesome if we have satanic orgies at our shows, but we don’t. It’s not something that…We don’t know anything about it but bring it on, that would be fuc*ing awesome!”

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01:54 Number of new songs?

02:34 – Sick album covers

03:36 – New Jersey death metal scene

05:35 The band’s name

06:54 ATION bands

07:43 Death – Scream Bloody Gore cover

09:34 Monotheistic religions

13:44 Mock the church at 3 AM

15 14 Xipe Totec, Elysium (Eternity is Nigh), Impending Diabolical Conquest

18 00 Is the world more religious now or back in 1992?

20:34 Last words...

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