Photo by Alvino Salcedo
It’s no secret that all of the nerds at Decibel—not just the video game ones—are fans of Denver quartet Blood Incantation. Capable of delivering riffs as angular as they are punishing, the Stargate frequent fliers continually incorporate heavy doses of psychedelic, world and synth music into their core genetics in an effort to push the cosmic boundaries of death metal while still somehow remaining within the same necrotic galaxy. Already Top 40 Album of the Year winners with 2019’s Hidden History of the Human Race, the band has put forth another strong contender with this year’s Absolute Elsewhere. This latest LP provides a dense sonic landscape to explore that feels like a culmination of their experiences to this point, breaking the laws of physics to synthesize something greater than the sum of its parts. Thought our recent cover story details their new record at length, those previously mentioned co-nerds couldn’t help but notice Jeff Barrett—bassist for Blood Incantation and Spectral Voice, as well as today’s player character—signaling a fondness for a similarly unconventional presence in the gaming community.
The name Hideo Kojima is an increasingly common mention in the Kill Screen arcade. An auteur game director since the 1980s, he boasts an encyclopedic knowledge of movies, has made pals with Hollywood celebrities and developed into a social media darling. Readers of a niche column for an extreme music magazine, however, likely know him best for helming the critically-acclaimed, long-running and incredibly deep tactical espionage series Metal Gear Solid. A technical and complex stealth game on the surface with a near opaque narrative focusing on philosophies around the military industrial complex, nuclear proliferation and the effect on rapidly-advancing AI on humanity, MGS is appreciated as much for its one-of-a-kind storytelling as it is for unique and tense gameplay. No wonder that Barrett, spotted repping a Metal Gear Solid long sleeve and praising Kojima on Instagram, finds a kindred soul in one of gaming’s most singular voices. The truth is out there, and Kill Screen was eager to uncover it.
What was your first gaming experience?
My first gaming experience goes back to the SNES days with Duck Hunt and Mario Bros. My godfather, who was my dad’s best friend, got me and my siblings a Nintendo when I was, like, 2 years old or something. Obviously it came with Duck Hunt and Mario because those were the biggest games for the system at the time, I feel like. From there, I just tried to expand out. Not long after that, I think I got a Sega Genesis from my grandparents and that started a new obsession, for sure. Sonic: [the Hedgehog] 2 was probably my most played game of all time.
What was it about the Sega Genesis that really gripped you over the Nintendo?
Honestly, I didn’t know it at the time because I wasn’t really a musician when I was 4 or 5 years old, but definitely the soundtrack and the sound card. The Genesis just had a different tone and feeling to all of the soundtracks that were ever made for these games. When Sonic & Knuckles came out and you could plug Sonic 2 into the top of the cartridge? It was, like, the most futuristic thing I had experienced. [Laughs]
There always was that kind of hyper-modern aesthetic to the Genesis that made it really appealing. Even though it was such a big bomb, but the 32X and the Sega CD and all these things that you could plug into the Sega, there was always something cool about how modal it was compared to Nintendo, which was just console after console after console.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, they even had the first online service [Sega Meganet in Japan]. I’m pretty sure you could download games from this attachment [the Mega Modem] that you had for the Genesis. I never had one, [laughs] but I remember later in high school meeting friends that also grew up with Genesis and they told me about how they had this super primitive online capability. That’s pretty fucking crazy for the early-, mid-’90s. Yeah, just the fast-paced-ness of of Sonic 2, I think. Also, it was a pretty sleek-looking console, you know? The controllers, the console itself—pretty futuristic.
What have you been playing lately and what are typically the games that you prefer to play?
Man, I wish I could say I’ve been spending a whole lot of time playing games recently. I broke my foot, like, 11 weeks ago. I had the summer off from tour stuff for the first time and in a bit, so I was like, Oh, sick. I’m gonna be able to get all sorts of hiking in and shit, and then… that didn’t happen. [Laughs] I was just hanging out and playing some games. Actually, I recently figured out that you could still play Starcraft on [Battle.net], so I’ve been playing a bit of Starcraft again. But I definitely prefer games of the stealth genre, I would say. Obviously the Metal Gear Solid series is extremely important to me. The second game [Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty] in particular I feel really opened up my eyes to a lot of stuff.
Why that one in particular?
Mainly the themes for it. I feel like the themes from Metal Gear Solid 2 were never really portrayed in any other game prior to that. The whole conversation about AI and what it could potentially do to the human species, it’s an important one, obviously. Of course it’s been discussed in countless movies, [like] Terminator.
There’s something about switching characters in the middle of the game—actually, really early on in the game. But it was so full of twists and turns that I hadn’t experienced something like that with a video game media before. It was like experiencing a movie, but we’re all playing it. I feel like that just opened up the doors for so many more games to kind of get weird, you know? For a young person who’s like, Oh man, I’m ready to play as Snake, and you just get kicked in the stomach, you’re like, …Alright. I guess I’m playing as this guy now. But I think it was an important move that they did. They played the old switcheroo in all the commercials and stuff leading up to the release of the game. Obviously, that influenced other games to be able to do the same. Nearly 20 years later, The Last of Us Part II pulls a similar switcheroo. I would say that’s one of my favorite games of all time, that’s been made recently, too. It’s an experience.
Why is it that stealth gameplay hooks you?
The tension that can be created in this artificial world that translates into your actual body. As a kid in the ’90s, James Bond movies, Goldeneye and all that, ninjas, [laughs] those are all so cool and unobtainable as a suburban kid in the ’90s. Being able to get a little taste of it, even if it is in a virtual media, it’s still something that really got its hooks in me. Syphon Filter was also another massive game for me.
The first Syphon Filter game is phenomenal.
Yeah! The first and second ones, I actually replayed them last year because they did a release on PlayStation 5. It was basically emulating the PlayStation 1 games.
I guess it’s just being able to do stuff that you can’t do in real life. There’s always gonna be that desire to reach out of the norm and and experience something that you would not be able to otherwise. It’s just cool, man. [Laughs]
We did initially case you as a nerd from your Amoeba Records “What’s In My Bag?” video, where you were wearing a Metal Gear Solid shirt, and then I found on your Instagram page that you were shouting out Metal Gear Solid and Kojima on the game’s 22nd birthday. What is it about the series that makes it one of your favorites, if not your favorite series of all of gaming?
It has to do with the gameplay mechanics and the overall twists and turns of a pretty convoluted story. There’s so many great characters in the series. It takes all these elements of stuff that I’m interested in and kind of mashes it into one. Specifically, seeing a video game company really push the capabilities of the machine that they’re working with. Each release, they’re maxing out the ability of of the hardware, and I think that kind of reflects back to Blood Incantation and Spectral Voice and how we are also trying to maximize and really push our capabilities of our own bodies and our own playing abilities. We’re not machines, you know, [laughs] but we do share a lot of similarities, I would say.
It’s just really cool to see this story evolve. I don’t think Kojima really had the whole timeline for Big Boss and Snake laid out when when he first started making it back in the ’80s with Metal Gear, but seeing how he could develop these stories and connect everything together was really cool.
Do you think the series has a future without him?
No, I don’t think so. I don’t think they really need to continue. I don’t think there needs to be a sixth game unless Kojima was involved, and it looks like he’s buried the hatchet with Konami. I know Konami is like, “Hey, we would take him back if we could,” but he’s got his own shit going on now. I’m excited to see what stealth game he’s been cooking up allegedly. I don’t know. If the fifth game was actually released how it was supposed to be, I feel like I would have an easier answer to just be like, “No, all the loose ends were tied up, hopefully.” I don’t really think there’s much more to expand on, but also, it’s not my IP, so I can’t really say.
They’re doing Metal Gear Solid Delta, which is basically just an updated version of Metal Gear Solid 3. Are you personally excited to experience that yourself or does it feel strange without Kojima’s involvement?
Honestly, I am pretty excited for that. I feel like that game and all of the games could use modern gameplay, or at least modern controlling, I suppose. Going back, it does feel a bit dated for some of the controls and item select and the camera angles, stuff like that. So seeing it on a modern console, especially if they’re reusing the voice acting and pretty much doing it shot-for-shot, I feel like it could be really cool and I am excited to play it.
You mentioned that you’re excited to see what stealth game [Kojima] comes out with. Are you interested at all in his other titles like Death Stranding? Or do you really need that stealth mechanic to be very excited?
Yeah, honestly, I’m very excited for Death Stranding 2: [On the Beach]. The first game I played during COVID and I loved it. I put way too much time into that game, [laughs] but I felt like I could relate to it because it’s about a career in service, more or less, and you’re connecting all of these different branches across a dystopian wasteland that is the former United States, and you gather more vehicles and exoskeletons to help you traverse the crazy landscape that you’re in. I used to deliver weed as a courier in Colorado for an edible company and a hash company. Seeing Kojima take these inspirations from real-life couriers that use exoskeleton walking devices in Japan, it’s funny to see art imitating life and then reflecting back and life imitating art.
It was a crazy game to play during COVID because it’s all about connecting these other branches of people. They called it the first “strand game,” which… [laughs]. I’m just excited to see what he does for the second game because the first one was so honed in on all these different elements of exploration and building mechanics and stuff. I’m curious to see if he continues that for the second game or if there’s some other ideas that he’s going to be working with.
In that Instagram post where you shouted out Kojima and Metal Gear Solid, you also had the soundtrack on vinyl in the shot. Did the Metal Gear Solid OST—or any OST—impact your musical approach or your interest in music?
Yeah, absolutely, especially the Metal Gear Solid soundtrack and the second Metal Gear Solid soundtrack. I put those on to listen to in the van all the time when we’re on tour or even just back at home. It’s very synth heavy too, which obviously we’re interested in.
But I feel like the PlayStation game that really impacted my approach to music would actually be the Chrono Cross soundtrack. It’s one of my favorite games of all time, absolutely. I got it not long after it came out. I was pretty young, I was in fourth or fifth grade or some shit maybe when it came out, and started playing it and realized it was difficult to traverse this land in the game. I came back to it a couple months later after not getting stuck at a particular part of the game. When I eventually beat it, I just immediately started it over.
In particular, the soundtrack, [composer] Yasunori Mitsuda is just a master of melody, he’s a master of harmony. His bass lines are incredible—very influential to my playing style and how I approach writing music. I played Chrono Trigger before that, and seeing some of those returning themes and motifs into Chrono Cross is super cool. Obviously with the updated sound chip from the SNES to the PlayStation, it was a little more realistic-sounding. To this day, I feel like that’s my most-played soundtrack. I’ll be up and driving around in the mountains or whatever. It’s great adventure music, you know? [Laughs] Throw that on when you’re driving through canyons and mountains, it’s like, Alright, I’m ready! Let’s go! Probably one of the most important games I ever played, for sure.
You mentioned playing it in the van. Has anybody else in the band been unaware of what it is and had their interest piqued because of the soundtrack?
Yeah. I feel like I kind of forced it down everybody’s throat, but [vocalist/guitarist] Paul [Riedl] was actually already familiar. He played Chrono Cross in the early 2000s. I feel like they learned to appreciate it in a different way, because it wasn’t attached to the game for them—it’s just the music.
Blood Incantation lyrically explores concepts of space, inner self, exploring that setting. Have you encountered any games in your life that may not have similar themes, but kind of give that same impression, that same sense of exploration to you?
Yeah, I’ll return to Metal Gear Solid 2 for that matter. I feel like the themes for that game, as someone interested in exploration of the mind and what society expects of you, the developments of technology and how that impacts us as human beings, I feel like there’s a lot of connections between them. It really opened my eyes to just look past what is being presented and have your own interpretations. Music is so connected to everything I do in life. The themes might not be super present, but there’s connections between everything, for sure.
You brought up a mutual appreciation of the boundary pushing that Blood Incantation and Spectral Voice do, and compared it to Kojima perpetually pushing these boundaries in both what games can be and the technological limitations of the hardware that these games run on. Have you ever taken any kind of pointers from these games that you’ve experienced? [Have you] been inspired by any particular moments in games where it felt really progressive, or transgressive even?
Playing The Last of Us series made me want to be a better person overall—just don’t take anything for granted, or the people that you’re around for granted. Talk to people about your problems if you have them. Shit happens to people, and it’s not worth losing somebody over them. Try to just see both sides of every story. Or not both, but all sides, I think. It’s important to approach life like it’s not a video game. You don’t get an extra life. [Laughs]
It is interesting that two of the titles that you brought up, Death Stranding came out right before the pandemic—it was holiday 2019—and The Last of Us Part II was maybe the very beginning or a similar time frame. But really tied into that time period [are] these much more heavy, emotionally-taxing titles that have you reevaluating the world that you live in and how you appreciate it. The pandemic affected all aspects of life, but do you get a sense that you give a bit more weight to the moral or story implications of a game after living through something like the pandemic or is there always going to be some kind of comfort food, decompression element to playing a game?
I think both, actually. The pandemic kind of brought me back into gaming. Prior to that, I wanted to so bad. It was such a big part of growing up and my teenage years. We’ve been on the road or writing music or practicing or just doing so many band-related activities, that I never really had the time to just jump back in to my games that I was a fan of or even explore new games. So I feel like just having that opportunity… I mean, obviously it sucked for everybody in multiple different levels. With the release of the PlayStation 5 during COVID, I was fortunate enough to get one really early on in its release. It made me go back and be able to become really involved in these games again.
There will always be a part of me that is just using it as a stress reliever, I suppose. But having the development of these stories is equally as important, following these emotional journeys. It’s crazy because early games, ones that I grew up with on Genesis or Nintendo, the story wasn’t as important. Obviously there’s elements to each game that make whether the story is just mindless, or mindless gameplay, or whatever. There’s always going to be an emotional tie to whatever you’re playing.
Now that you’ve got a PlayStation 5 [and] you’re back into gaming, are there any games that you’re looking forward to in the future?
I don’t even know what’s coming out anymore, honestly. Death Stranding 2, Delta, but other than that, our tour season is starting back up, so I’m not gonna have a whole lot of time on the couch.
You’re talking about MGS1, Syphon Filter, Chrono Cross, a lot of PS1 games, and then picking up a PS5 at the beginning of the pandemic. You’ve expressed fondness for Death Stranding and The Last of Us Part II. Do you have a preference between retro nostalgia versus cutting-edge modern games?
No, I wouldn’t say I prefer one over the other. I appreciate both if they’re done well. I do fancy some of the cutting-edge stuff. It’s just cool to see what these developers are trying to cook up and implement in their games and, as I said, pushing the envelope for what they can actually accomplish. But there will always be a soft spot for me for retro games if they are done well.
Another one that comes to mind from Genesis is Vectorman. Honestly, I would love to see an updated version of that game, but it might not translate into modern consoles. But if not, I can always return to the the first two games, because they’re basically flawless.
Fortunately, they’ve done a few re-releases that you can get. There’s a collection definitely for the PlayStation 4, and I [James] think even on the PSP as well. Good for them for making that available to people, you know?
Yeah, absolutely. That’s something that I recently realized when I was going through an old back catalog of games that I still have sitting in a box. I’m like, What is the point of me keeping these, just collecting dust? And I think it’s out of a fear of preserving this game. I think game preservation is extremely important and being able to have the ROMs of old games when you don’t have a physical release. Obviously, a lot of these companies are not down with that, but it’s supposed to be available. They’re not making money on old games unless they actually put them out on their digital systems or whatever, so being able to preserve these games for anybody to be able to enjoy I think is extremely important. I feel like these developers and these video game companies, they’ve got to get with the times and accept the importance of of making these games available for everybody.
Absolute Elsewhere is available now via Century Media and can be ordered here.
Tickets for Blood Incantation’s tour with Midwife can be purchased here.
Follow Blood Incantation on Bandcamp, Instagram and Facebook.
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