Culture
Blood Incantation’s Morris Kolontyrsky on cosmic death metal and ‘Absolute Elsewhere’
By: Nicholas Kobe
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CHICAGO, Illinois (WOUB) – Blood Incantation combines death metal and prog rock in a way that proves you can have your cake and eat it too.
The band writes massive, sweeping tracks filled with technical, beautiful musicianship while remaining undeniably heavy and vicious, all set against the beauty and horror of space.
Blood Incantation continues to explore these themes on Absolute Elsewhere, their most successful album to date, earning critical acclaim and drawing in droves of new fans.
Following expansive headline tours, the band has returned to the U.S. for a short run accompanying Emperor to close out this explosive chapter in their career before launching into the next stage of their evolution.
WOUB spoke with guitarist and synth player Morris Kolontyrsky ahead of the band’s upcoming show at the Byline Bank Aragon Ballroom (1106 W Lawrence Ave.), where Blood Incantation will support Emperor.
Nicholas Kobe: If you had to sum it up in one sentence, how would you describe Blood Incantation to somebody who had never heard of them?
Morris Kolontyrsky: Generally, I’d go for the type of music we play—the genre—which, to me, is to say we’re a band that plays atmospheric, psychedelic, ambient death metal, which prompts the conversation because most people have no idea what the hell that means.
Nicholas Kobe: When you say that people don’t know what the hell that means, does that normally come in at the death metal side of things, the ambient side of things, or the fact that those two things are in the same band?
Kolontyrsky: Probably all of it put together. It’s funny to see the reaction. Sometimes I’ll be at a store wearing a shirt or whatever. They’ll ask, “What is that?” I’m always down to talk about it. But I’ll just say a string of genres that most people have never heard of before, for better or for worse. Sometimes they’re like, “Yeah, cool. I know what you’re talking about.” But generally, they’re like, “This guy is psychotic.”
Talking about the genre fusion, what about synths, ambient, progressive, and psychedelic music do you think fits so well with brutal death metal
Kolontyrsky: To be fair, the history there is deeper than just our band, right? I think the inherent tie between metal and progressive rock, ambient music, and, by extension, New Age, goes back much further—dating back to things like Mayhem using Conrad Schnitzler on Deathcrush (Silvester Anfang) as the first track.
Then other bands like Opeth obviously reference bands like Camel and Van Der Graaf Generator, and all the classic prog bands like Yes. That genre tie isn’t as far down the rabbit hole as one might think. We’re just tying it together in a different way by making the metal aspect of it more brutal, right?
Opeth did their thing for a long time, and they’re back to being really aggressive now, and it’s great—I love it—but they don’t necessarily have as many blast beats as we do or full-on brutal death metal as we do. So that genre tie has existed for way longer than us. I think that with the attention that we have now, people say, “Oh my God, I can’t believe it’s the first time this band is doing it.” But then on the other side, people are like, “This has been done before.”
To me, it’s the logical connection, and it is to everyone else in the band as well. That cosmic inherent darkness—the vast void of space—is equally brutal as it is ambient. So it makes sense to me.
A lot of people you meet from the old guard in these classic bands will tell you what they were listening to when they were growing up. Extreme music in the sense that we think of it now didn’t exist, so that meld is just a logical conclusion for people who like playing music that tries to push the limits of what music can be.
Now our version of that is combining a bunch of sh*t that may not have been put together in this way before. Our version of what was happening between bands in the early extreme scene of the late ’80s and ’90s is pushing those boundaries even further. We’re trying to see how “prog” we can make it while still keeping it extremely brutal and true death metal.
What’s been the most important thing you’ve learned about striking that balance between keeping it prog and experimental, but retaining that brutality?
Kolontyrsky: It’s very hard. So even back on Hidden History of the Human Race, the B-side track Awakening from the Dream of Existence was our most prog song to date. There was going to be a part at the end where we were going to do this kind of Guru Guru and Amon Düül–style jam that we wanted to toss in before the last section of the song. We tried it and jammed, but we realized we weren’t ready to integrate that kind of thing into our flavor of music quite yet, and the song turned out great without it.
We were like, “Let’s revisit this idea later.” So we did Timewave Zero, and we learned to communicate in an entirely different language of music using only synthesizers. I play acoustic guitar—there’s one guitar on the record. That really taught us how to think outside the box in terms of playing with each other and what each of us was putting into the pot.
Then, when it came time for Absolute Elsewhere, we had learned from ourselves. Ultimately, we needed to learn from ourselves how to do that and how to retain that perfect line. We really had to go to one extreme—being completely atmospheric—in order to come back and understand how to integrate everything in between. I think at this point, as we’ve said in many interviews during this cycle, we’re ultimately influenced by ourselves now because of the wide variety and range of music we’ve put out.
The Blood Incantation language is still being refined with Absolute Elsewhere. It’s our best offering so far, and we learned some new vocabulary, right? So for the next record, we’re really looking to see what we can do more of and how we can do more of it in a better way.
How do you determine when something feels right and when you’re ready to progress?
Kolontyrsky: That’s a good question. Really, ask any artist, musician, or anyone who creates anything, and it’s kind of a hard thing to answer because that innate feeling is always changing. It depends on the person, the people involved, and the type of project. It seems so primordial that it’s almost like asking me, “Why do I play music and what does it bring me?”
It’s kind of a strange, mystical, almost meditative state—the closest I can get to Nirvana. I don’t know, maybe the influence of whatever philosophy I read in high school or college, or being surrounded by the people I am now, or maybe even how my day was going could influence that decision in the moment—or just the cup of coffee I had that morning. So it’s really difficult to say there’s any one thing.
Absolutely. So the band has enjoyed significant success with Absolute Elsewhere. What do you think about that record really resonated with not only existing fans, but also so many new fans?
Kolontyrsky: So we did a lot of work trying to make sure that this album would be successful because we were putting all our eggs in this basket. This is our full-time job. We all quit bartending, teaching, whatever it was, some years back. It absolutely took us a long time to work on it. We really poured all of ourselves into how it was made, where it was made, and how long it took after the record was finished before it came out.
We started working with a lot of new people, like our management team and 5B, which helped us a lot because things were piling up beyond what the four of us could handle. We didn’t want to feel like an email company—we still wanted to jam, rehearse, and make the music the best it could be. So we weeded through a lot of different people to figure out how this band could continue, because we’d been so DIY for so long.
So when it came time for this album to really explode, there was a huge team of people behind it, and I’m really grateful for how it turned out. The reception has been amazing and, honestly, life-changing. I feel very grateful and, at this point, kind of responsible to keep pushing further to see how much crazier it can get.
I think about myself when I was younger, playing in bands and wondering, “How do you get any opportunity at all to do anything?” I don’t want to take this experience for granted or act complacent, because we’ve all played in bands for so long before Blood Incantation.
If you were to give advice to a younger band coming up who’s kind of in that position of doing everything DIY and is also scared to put it into the hands of other people — what kind of advice would you give them?
Kolontyrsky: First of all, you gotta surround yourself with the best of friends, right? Whatever this hypothetical person is — a band or a solo project — you gotta have your initial community strong and supportive, and you gotta believe in yourself, right? That’s step one. But beyond that, there are all these music business classes, lots of scammy managers and booking companies, and all this stuff. I think that takes away from the fact that it’s really so easy to do yourself.
So I feel like there’s no reason to bring in third parties or external forces into your thing until it calls for it. When it calls for it, you’ll know because you won’t be able to handle it on your own. But while you can still handle it alone, you should go all the way up until you can’t. Stick to your guns and do as much as you can on your own to prove that this is a real thing and it’s not just going to be manhandled by other people. I think the power of self is ultimately what I’m talking about.
Absolutely. Following the success of this album last year, you had a really big headlining tour, both in the U.S. and in Europe. What was the big standout moment of that for you?
Kolontyrsky: So the Absolute Elsewhere Tour — for the first leg of it, not this last November, the one before that — we were headlining rooms that were slightly bigger than what we were used to, which felt nice. We had our own bus, which was a blessing at the time, because we could get some sleep overnight and not have to drive a van. We had a small crew. So, you know, things were already beginning to change in very small steps.
I think after that tour, the following one in Europe was really where I was like, “Holy smokes, this is really blowing up,” because the record had been out for a little bit and people had time to breathe with it, whereas the tour before that it had just come out. In Europe, people knew the words; the crowds grew tenfold, and we were like, “Holy sh*t, this is like our show.”
It’s just that kind of instantaneous shock. You talk to enough musicians and you hear so many stories where the size of the crowd, when it grows, really impacts your performance and how you operate, and how serious this has actually become. I’ve changed a lot of my touring behavior to be more consistent and healthier because these shows are so serious and big. Not serious in the sense that it’s scary — it’s awesome. It’s what I live for. It’s shocking to see so many people into this crazy-ass band and this crazy-ass music. And it’s awesome. It’s people from all sorts of demographics and backgrounds.
You’re in the U.S. now doing a tour with Emperor. Going from the headlining slot on your last tour, how are you working to still bring that experience you’ve created for this album onto a tour where you’re supporting another artist?
Kolontyrsky: Emperor has asked us to be special guests for this tour, and so, you know, they’re giving us the breathing room to do what we want to do. It’s not necessarily a “stripped down” version. We’ll be playing for slightly less than an hour, so still a decent length. We will still be playing the record in full. It’ll be one of the last times we do that for quite a while. But the production will pretty much be the same, honestly, aside from us playing some other songs I don’t want to reveal quite yet.
This tour is really a nice opportunity for us to pay tribute and homage to one of the greatest bands of all time, in my opinion. This opportunity would be foolish to pass up — to play with these legendary guys. It’s gonna be one of the last legs of the Absolute Elsewhere tour in North America, if not the last one. So the production will be fairly similar aside from some other songs, but that’s as much as I can really say right now. We are super stoked to do it.
The thing is, it’s very nice for us to do a support tour like this because afterwards I can just go watch one of my favorite bands of all time. It feels a little bit less like work and more like, hell yeah — we’ve done this tour and now we get to do it like this with a little less pressure on us. Not that the pressure really matters to me, but now you do the show and it’s like the show isn’t over. You don’t have to leave immediately. Now we get to do our thing, which I love to do, and then see another band that has inspired me beyond words to play.
And that kind of leads into my final question, which is: what is next for Blood Incantation?
Kolontyrsky: So we’ve got some pretty interesting ideas moving forward. Some collaborators, I’m not at liberty to say at the moment, are interested. But I think, you know, if someone were to look at our European festival tour dates and then see some of what’s happening this summer and put together some pieces, I think you could kind of see the trajectory of the band in terms of growth.
For the music, which we have already been working on, I’m not going to say it’s “Absolute Elsewhere Part Two” — we never want to do a part two — but we’re going to keep exploring our realm and see what new paths we have before us. The reception of this record has influenced the way we think, but we’re still out there buying records every day, finding new music, and chatting with old heads about bands that went by the wayside that no one heard of. So that exploration is endless and the musical path is infinite. That’s what I’m inspired by now. We’ve got some stuff cooking up, and it’s exciting.