Machine Music's Albums of the Decade: An Interview with Blood Incantation

This is the 21st installment of the Albums of the Decade series of interviews. For the rest of the series go HERE.]

Artist: Blood Incantation

Album: Starspawn

Year: 2016

Label: Dark Descent Records

Favorite Song: "Vitrification of Blood (Part 1) "

The Bare Bones: Starspawn is the debut full-length by Blood Incantation, the Denver death metal outfit (whatever that word means) featuring members of other local bands such as Spectral Voice and Wayfarer. An instant cult success. the album has positioned BI as one of the leaders of a new wave of American death metal in recent years.

The Beating Heart: Blood Incantation, and Starspawn most prominently, is one of those uplifting success stories where a band goes as creative and as weird as it can (within the overall limitations of what one would call old school death metal, by and large) and reaps not only artistic benefits but also widespread acclaim and – relatively speaking – commercial success. Pitting together the aggressive, caveman attitude of the old school and combining it with a cerebral, almost proggy knack for twisting plots and shifting rhythms, Starspawn is that rare combination of intellect, reflexive spaciness, psychedelia, paranoia, and brute force. And, for those reasons, it is a landmark in modern death metal, and one of the best, most ambitious, and varied death metal releases of the past decade.

As always, before proceeding to my pleasant and interesting conversation with Blood Incantation guitarist Morris Kolontyrsky I would like to encourage you to read the rest of this ongoing interview project, which will be running until the end of the year (and probably spilling into the beginning of 2020), with a lot more exciting conversations to be published. You can follow us on any one of our social media outlets (Facebook, Instagram, Spotify) and also, if so inclined, support us on Patreon. My aim has been to use whatever support we can get to produce interviews like these, focusing on the art and life of that art, as well as other projects supporting our local scene, such as the newly launched music compilation MILIM KASHOT VOL. 1 of amazing local death metal, grindcore, black metal, folk, and more. But, to the interview. Enjoy!

So basically, I loved Starspawn from the moment it came out, I was very enthused about it. And I was actually quite honestly very surprised how quickly it caught on.

You know, that was very insane for us. We had no idea that was going to happen. Honestly, even while we were recording the record, and I stand behind every note played and the ideas presented in it and just like how insanely dense it is in terms of the arrangements of the songs. But there were definitely parts where I was just like: “Is this too crazy for people?” I didn’t even know what kind of music we’re playing. And I guess that’s what artists say, you know, that once they went outside their comfort zone that happened to be the thing that caught on. I feel very much that was the case with us – I was questioning it, and to a degree that level insanity is what made it catch on.

But that's like a magical moment, right? Because you're being rewarded for being weird.

I mean, we've come a long way as a band in the last three years, but it had this kind of strangeness to it and this almost like an amateur feel that I think really worked in our advantage.

We may be getting ahead of ourselves, but that’s okay because I’m not that structured….

[Laughs] I’m sorry.

No, no, it's all good. Not by way of criticism. I'm criticizing myself here. But I think that what I found interesting about that album that I remember thinking that on the one hand it was s super cerebral, super meticulous, all the riff changes, atmosphere changes. I don’t want to use the word proggy because that has a certain tone to that, which I wouldn’t necessarily pin to that…

Yeah, but that certainly is an aspect of it.

Yeah, but it felt, I don't know, the word “smart” comes to mind. And at the same time, it felt really dumb. 

[Laughs] I hear you.

And I think I was fascinated by that combination because that's a rare mix of something that sounds super intelligent, thought-out, articulated, and  at the same time it's so raw, and so heavy and aggressive. And that, to me, at least, what caught my eye or ear, or whatever. If any of that makes any of that makes sense.

It does, and I hear you're saying yeah, it is extremely raw. And the thing about that is, and we still have this in us, but especially back then in that that time period….  I think that old school revival had already been a big part of extreme music, and I think even when our EP was coming out that that was already entrenched in extreme music and publications covering that kind of stuff. Ever since bands like Repugnant and, in my eyes, even early Tribulation, that really sparked the idea. It maybe took America second to catch, but by the time Starspawn came out I think that was already very much a thing. And we were just young, and very aggressive and it felt like we had something to prove. The way we thought of it was the way bands back then did, because they were all teenagers, you know? Just “young, dumb, full of cum.”  So I feel like not only were we trying to channel the actual music itself, but the feeling of what it was like to be in that type of band at that time.

So I have a related question that I wasn't supposed to get to yet, but of the things that's interesting about you guys is where you're from. And there's a very busy Denver metal scene with a lot of interesting stuff. Way back I interviewed Chris Reifert from Autopsy and I asked him: “What the was the deal with Florida? What was happening? Florida seems to me like the most, like indistinct place ever.

[Laughs] It’s a dismal place.

And he said: “Look, there was nothing to do. It was, it was like the most boring place on earth. And once people started doing this thing, and everyone got a hold of something that was interesting, that was it.” And so since then I have become fascinated by this idea of isolated scenes that grow away from major markets that somehow develop a kind of flavor or identity just because they're from this more remote place. So did any of that play into into being from Denver? Did you ever feel like you were from a scene at all?

That's interesting. The way, personally, that I would answer that, is in terms of the idea of a scene: no, not really. Because when I joined this band – Paul [Riedi] and Isaac [Faulk] were jamming together in 2011, and 2012 was when I joined – this was the first real metal project I was ever a part of. I played in a lot of indie and surf rock bands, and punk bands, all sorts of different stuff. But this was the first truly death metal band I was ever a part of. So to me that scene mentality was never part of the thing going into it. I was interested in what happened in the 90s and I'd read about it and all that stuff, but I never really felt personally affiliated with that type of lifestyle until I joined this band. And so when we started jamming the bands that were around were Spectral Voice, which was the three of us, but that band was already more along than Blood Incantation was at the time. There were bands like Cephalic Carnage, which I had known about for years. But they were like on a level above, it didn't feel like if they were part of the same community of what we were trying to do. So there were a lot of different types of bands. But I wouldn't say there really was a death metal scene outside of suburban slam, and pay-to-play bands and all of that. I fully support all that, It's awesome, I like some slam stuff. But the way the whole thing worked was very different, and it’s not Denver, it's just suburb stuff. And I wouldn't call that part of the scene that we're part of now. So, it definitely played into us having a thing to prove, like I was saying earlier. And it's kind of crazy what ends up happening. Now there's all these bands…. People even move here expecting to start a band. But in reality it's like same five or six dudes in every band [laughs]. So, yeah to answer your question, we never really felt part of anything bigger than the idea of what we were trying to portray.

So, I'll ask that differently. So you said there wasn't necessarily a solidified death metal scene, but there is a very, very metal scene right? There's black stuff, there's Doom stuff going on. So that's not a scene as such, but were you in contact with these other bands, did you even care what they're doing? Like, Isaac’s in Wayfarer, which isn’t a death metal band.

That band was an idea for a really long time before they were actually playing shows and doing stuff. There were a lot of those big bands that people know of now from Denver, even Primitive Man were in its early stages back then. So the camaraderie was there just in terms of just like being in a band that goes on tour and doing cool shit. But in terms of writing music and representing your art within a select part of the scene, that  wasn't really a thing. It is now, for sure. But all of those other bands like Cephalic Carnage I was not friends with them – Isaac was because he grew up in Boulder so he knew some of those dudes. But they wouldn't come to our practice, we wouldn't chill with them. I mean, it was just the early developing stages of what people think of Denver now. look what was happening back then. So I don't know how much that had to do with how we operated. Maybe on a subconscious level it did, but we didn’t just hang out with other bands. 

So, the question I always begin with because I'm always fascinated by this question is, if you remember a moment in your life, like as a kid, or, you know, some people described as a shift between childhood and adulthood, music wise. But do you remember a moment when you listened to a song or an album and it just blew your mind? When you said: “You're like, what the hell is this? This is scary shit/amazing! I've never heard anything like it!”

Oh yeah, it’s “Hallowed Be Thy Name” by Iron Maiden, a fucking classic song. This was when Napster was around, so I must have been like 10 or 11. And I kept trying to download this song. I was already listening to Metallica, as well Black Sabbath and Deep Purple and all those kind of like proto-heavy-metal bands. And I knew about that band for such a long time, because of the imagery and all that stuff. And I had come across listening to it just completely randomly –  someone in school was listening to it on their computer and I heard it and I was like: “I need to hunt this thing down.” It took me forever to figure out what song I was looking for. So, anyway,I kept trying to download “Hallowed Be Thy Name” on Napster, and I would get the file and it would play the first 15 seconds of the song with the bell and that clean guitar intro, and I was hooked. But 15 seconds in this ad came on that was like Bill Clinton's voice.

[Laughs]

This was a big thing with a lot of downloadable content at that time. It just snapped into some weird ad, and the song wouldn't come back, it would just be that for 30 seconds. So I kept trying all these different files, kept trying to find, and kept trying to find it. And actually, this is pretty interesting. So I went to a private Jewish school for a long time, from second to eleventh grade. And finally on eighth grade we did like a pilgrimage to Israel.

Oh shit.

And I bought Number of the Beast in Tel Aviv.

You're shitting me.

And it was then that I was able to listen to the entire “Hallowed be Thy Name” for the first time.

Wait, wait, wait. That's too much. Wait. Do you remember where?

So I bought the CD in some mall in Tel Aviv. At that time we didn’t go to any other city because it was considered too dangerous, so we spent a lot of time in the desert. I don't specifically remember where but I remember being on a bus, just like seeing tanks out in the distance and listening to this album over and over and over and over.

That's weird. So basically you got to listen to the whole version only after you bought it in Israel. Is that right? 

Yeah, I probably could have found it other ways but for some reason it just took that long.

Do you remember where were you when you first heard it?

In Tel Aviv, we were going somewhere on the bus, I don’t remember. I had a CD player and I just wouldn't put it down.

And how was it like to get through the 15-second mark?

It was blissful. I mean, that's still one of the greatest songs of all time, in my opinion. But it really marked a shift as far as my musical understanding, because I had already been listening to thrash and stuff and was exposed to a fair amount of heavy music. But the composition on that just really threw me for a spin. I was blown away by how heavy it can be, how catchy, how you can come back to these riffs in different ways, have all these different turnarounds that are similar but different in one note and how that makes a huge difference. So the way I've written and understood music has really changed since then.

So you're saying all of this as the adult Morris or as the kid Morris, when you were listening to it as a kid…

That back then for sure changed a lot, because I ended up learning how to play all those songs. In retrospect, thinking about why it caught me, wouldn't be able to tell you that back then, I didn’t have the vocabulary.

I have to admit, but I never got into Iron Maiden.

Hey man, do you like Judas Priest? I feel like it’s either more or the other.

I think I like Judas Priest more. And I’ve tried, recently someone, well not that recently, but someone told me that I should start listening to Iron Maiden albums from the beginning, and I did….

Ah, I don’t know if that’s true. 

Well, whatever it’s what I did. So, anyway I have a conflicted relationship with Iron Maiden 

[Laughs]

So maybe you could help me understand. Because the band you're in right now, I'm trying to think if I think of Blood Incantation in terms of “catchy,” and I guess I do to a certain respect but it seems like you're a lot more all over the place than an Iron Maiden song. So, I guess my question would be: if you're if you're as inspired by that compositional mode, where do you see that playing into what you do?

I mean, it has to affect me subconsciously, you know? There’s no going beyond that, on the simplest level. In terms of just the way I play guitar, the palm-muting style, the triplets. It’s mostly in my technique, honestly, in letting the song represent itself, if that makes sense. But it's in the execution, the way you play the chord. It’s difficult to explain. Like, to me, there's a specific picking pattern and style that's more than just the triplets for which they're known for. It's this precision, and that's, I think, what makes it catchy because you can latch on to this thing. It's not even the hooks it’s the style of playing that’s catchy, and that’s heavy metal, that guitar playing is the epitome of heavy metal to me.

So, I’m someone who was raised on, you could say, the era after Iron Maiden. And the bands I listened to were all the kind of quintessential kind of death and thrash metal bands right, that were obviously influenced by Iron Maiden, but because I grew up with those bands, Iron Maiden always sounded, I don't know, less heavy. And I guess what you’re saying is that their heaviness isn't necessarily in how much gain is on their amp or whatever it's in how they play. Is that right?

Yeah, absolutely. And they’ve maintained that power to this day. That's the ultimate proof for me. I mean, they have some records that kind of suck, whatever, any band has been around for 30 years will. But I could still hear the songs that I don’t like live and go: “Wow, this is heavy. This is heavy metal.” And that’s why, it’s the execution that's so powerful to me. And that's true for our band too. In Blood Incantation we put a lot of stress on the way we play. And I think that's a very unique thing, especially for a band these days, because anyone can play the same riff. But if you're playing it with the same idea of “how.” Even Trey Azagthoth talks about this a lot. His style of playing isn't necessarily the riff itself. They aren’t all that crazy, sometimes they are, but it’s just how he's sliding around while playing.

And when you said that you've come a long way between Starspawn and nowת do you feel like that's where you've come along the most? In honing that?

Oh yeah, absolutely. Our next record is full with that idea. Our execution on this next album, it intentionally took three years for us to get to this point. Because we needed to play live hundreds of times to develop this thing to be more than just a death metal band, essentially. 

Interestingly, I mean, this may be to the point, but I feel like personally a lot of the death metal bands that I've witnessed live, some of the precision that's on the record gets lost in the live setting, because it's really easy to lose that laser focus. And it can even be like, you know, that the sound isn't right, or the other balance isn't right, and everything becomes muddled. Just last week I saw your Israeli label mates.

Kever? Yeah, that band’s awesome. 

Yeah, they’re breaking up.

That’s a shame.

It is, they’re amazing. But, so they’re last show in Israel was last week, they still have one other show at Killtown Deathfest. And I always like seeing them live, and the first thing that comes to mind when you see them is that you can hear everything. And it's so obvious that you can hear everything, is because someone put in hours of work for you to be able to hear it all. It's obviously not an easy feat to have all those rifts happening at the same time and all time changes, and for it to be crystal clear.

In a live setting especially, it’s very difficult. And it’s ever-changing too. Sound is a physical thing, the room is going to play a massive role in that. So, yeah, I hear you. That band is incredible. We played with them in Israel two years ago.

Yeah, I was sorry to miss that show. I was bummed out about that. But you need to come again, that’s the only solution to that problem. 

Yeah, we will, for sure.

So one other thing I wanted to ask you is that when you listen back to Interdimensional Extinction and the shift into Starspawn, so it's not like a night and day type of thing. But Starspwn does sound more varied. People like to throw around “dynamics,” but that seems appropriate here.

Yeah, the dynamics I would say is a that's the touch thing. Because Interdimensional there's a whole story about recording that. That’s not how it was supposed to sound. All the drums are replaced, they sound like garbage, there's no dynamics there. But that has to do with the guy we recorded with, who fucked all his shit up, and it had to be remixed by a different person entirely and he was holding these files hostage. It was a whole insane situation and honestly I didn't even think the band was going to happen anymore after that, we were just so defeated. But when we recorded Interdimensional, I feel honestly that Interdimensional is more ambitious than Starspawn.

Why?

It has all the elements that make up our band to this day, that signature thing so we still do. But in little hidden ways that you can't necessarily tell. like “Obfuscating the Linear Threshold,” the second song on it. That song alone hints at everything about to happen in “Vitrification of Blood (Part 1)”

Interesting. So when you say “hint” that does that mean whatever happens in Starspawn is the more fleshed out version of that ambition?

Absolutely. Because we went to an actual studio and actually had rehearsals as a full band. In Interdimensional we didn’t even have a bass player, which is why Damon [Good] from Mournful Congregation filled in on. He was kind of the guest bass, we just sent him the tracks because Paul was friends with him and toured with Mournful a few times, and seeing that he was into death metal so we asked him as a favor to do it. But we weren't even a real band back then, it was just two guitars and drums  like you do guitars, drums and we jammed ever so often.

So, can I share like an insight that I've come across in these interviews? It seems that when the people who aren’t actually writing and recording the album often speak in terms of artistic growth, right? So I'm a huge Megadeth fan, and here I am going to get killed for this because I get killed every time I mention Megadeth in an interview.

[Laughs] They’ve got some ripping songs.

I’m good with my deviant tastes, I don’t need excuses. 

[Laughs]

But, anyway, the narrative about Megadeth is that the perceived leap, say, from an album like So Far, So Good, So What?! and and album like Rust in Peace is the result of what you might call artistic development. And then you talk to the musicians themselves, and nine times out of ten they say: “No, I bought a better amp” or “We had more money for studio time” or “I didn't break my guitar string that day.” Like, it's always like technical thing, or not a technical, but l circumstantial.  And so is that what you're saying here too?

Circumstantial, for sure. I feel “circumstantial” is very accurate. Because generally when a band is trying to present their first album, more often than not, or not even their first album, their first idea they’re putting out there, there are so many things to get in order that you just can never really figure out until you try to do it. And that first time is always going to be a mess. And even if the turnout is incredible, and it's just like this legendary day, whatever. I guarantee you there's a story talking like: “How this went wrong and that went wrong, and it was because it was the first idea we tried to do, and in the next record, we actually had to figure out everything that went wrong last time.”

And you feel like that's the biggest difference between Starspawn and Interdimensional, that you had that stuff figured out?

Personally. Like I said earlier, Interdimensional was the first real death metal material I'd ever recorded, let alone played, in my life. So I actually learned to speak the language in the time between Interdimensional and Starspawn. I did research. Like, I've been listening to this forever, for sure, but the playing was so different when you're approaching it…. Like I never used the tremolo before, you know? On Interdimensional Extinction my solos didn't have any trems, just straight, no weird bending, melting stuff. I had to figure out how to do that. So we definitely got way better as musicians in that time period.

And you feel like that's for you the most deciding factor in shift between those two albums?

Yeah, I mean, we got a bass player, we practiced relentlessly. Oh, yeah, we also went on tour for the first time we were playing Starspwn songs before the record was out. We were actually playing Starspwn songs on our first tour. So, yeah. We understood what it took to be good, technically good, and how to present our ideas. Like we talked about before, to figure out how are we going to make this not sloppy and shitty and be good. And then by the time we recorded Starspwn, we'd already played live a bunch, rehearsed a ton, and knew exactly how to play those songs. Whereas Interdimensional was more like a project. A weird artistic project.

I have something of an unfair question, and perhaps supported by the fact that you're describing yourself as an outsider, who, even though he had heard death metal, had to research death metal in order to be in a death metal band. Is that correct?

[Laughs] More or less.

Okay, so you've researched these bands and let's say you've researched Morbid Angel, for the sake of argument. And Morbid Angel, you know, depending on who you ask, and maybe some people say never, may not have sounded to some people's liking toward the latter part of the 90s and early 2000s. And so I don't know where you fall on this, but let’s assume there’s a kind of consensus that peak Morbid Angel was up until Domination, or something like that. So, on the one hand you're describing what your band is doing and what every band is doing: trying to get better at what we do, get better equipment, become better songwriters, rehearse your material, all that's good. But if that trajectory is just as linear as you describe it, then bad albums never happen. And so, I guess what I'm asking is, how do you prevent that? If it's possible, even I don't know if it is, but how do you keep in mind, while you're researching these careers of other bands, that, yeah, you're trying to just get the better production, but you're not getting the “too good production,” or you're not paying too much attention? You know, I'm saying?

Definitely. That, I think, comes across, and this is a very difficult thing to achieve, especially with a band of people that has to be on the same page. But, that comes across, and this is kind of a crazy answer, in your philosophy of life. In how you live. Any artistic idea is deeply rooted in way more, obviously, than just the music or just the images behind it, or , like I was saying, the way you play and whatever, but also in the way you feel about it. And so in terms of progress and this linear ideas of just “Sure you can become a better musician, you get a nicer guitar, you can practice more, become very songwriter.” But see that last part is the key, that to become a better songwriter is not a linear trajectory. That's like a very difficult thing to do, because everyone does it in a different way. That essentially is what makes your band, in my opinion, bad or good: your songs. So I don't know, it just has to be the way these four, five, six people feel about how what they're doing. Yeah. And it's that philosophy comes across in whatever production you want to use, whatever riffs you want to play, then it's going to work.

And that's a pretty Morbid Angel answer, honestly. Because Trey has always been into, you know, weird occult shit. I recently read an interview with him from about five years ago, and he was still talking all this New Age philosophy, and he was extremely articulate about it, and it's more or less an evolution of what she was trying to do on Altars of Madness. So, in terms of their progression as a band, people might think: “Sure, this record sucks, this record, this doesn’t have good songs,” and sure, some of them are bad, admittedly. But his philosophy and ideas in the way he plays and the way music is, is still there. So they have really gone beyond in my opinion, even to this day.

So what role does communication have in that? Because that's a group of people. You can't just magically be on the same page. Right? 

You know, going on tour really solidifies it because you start to get this hive mind thing going on, where everyone's thinking the same way and laughing at the same joke eight million times. But, that's a bond that's created by something that you do, and by the fact that you share a very intimate space with these people, all the time. The lack of privacy. I mean, you were in the military, I feel like there's crossover there.

Yeah, I mean there is crossover but I, again, you're either fortunate or unfortunate enough to be at the latter stages of all my interviews, when I'm packing all these weird thoughts about communication, and the importance of talking about these things. And that sometimes that seems to be the difference between those bands with long careers and those that end up breaking up. But we’re not going to talk about that now. I just have one more question. Actually, I wanted to ask something about the production, but fuck it. When you look back at the album, now you've been through a process of becoming a better musician and hopefully a better songwriter, as we said, is there something when you look back at Starspawn and say: “That's the shit! That is amazing. I'm proud of that. I'm happy we did that”? 

Well, overall, I'm very proud of the whole thing. I love that record, and I listened to it so much after we recorded it, mainly because it was music I wanted to hear. I mean, that's part of the reason I even make music is because….. I like to list my own bands, is what I'm saying.

That’s a rare thing.

You know, it is, but all of us in the band do that a lot. I mean, we’ll be on tour and listen to our own records. I sounds crazy, but we made this thing because there's nothing else that sounds like that, and that’s what we want to hear.

Yeah, it makes complete sense.

Just on a “m”e level here, and this is kind of tooting my own horn, but I thought “Meticulous Soul Devourment” turned out to be absolutely fantastic. When I had written that like little classical acoustic piece I wrote it for the record specifically, I didn’tI have just lying around. But all the little synth stuff that was added to it. I never even imagined that, but when we do that in the studio it just brought it out so much, these little intricacies in the melody that I never heard before. So I’m very happy with how that turned out. And then also I'm very proud of, yeah, that first song. We played that live, tracked, maybe one or two takes. That was almost the easiest song on the record to record.

How is that possible? [Laughs]

[Laughs] Yeah, I dunno, we rehearsed a lot. We’ll go in with this big, looming thing, and thinking “How are we going to do this? This is crazy” and it ends up being the easiest thing to record on the record. 

It's weird how those things work out in life, that the stuff you’re stressed about, maybe because you stress about it, comes out easy and the stuff that you kind of disregard becomes the real problem later.

Exactly, and it kind of makes sense because the stuff you don’t focus on ends up getting in the way.

I guess the solution is a 28-minute song on your next album, just to keep you on your toes.

Yeah. That one actually turned out the same way. The A side of the record was much harder to record, because it’s just one giant, long song. 

You're talking about the current album?

Yeah, this next one. Because we focused on playing that for so long, because two of the songs we'd already played on tour a few times. And “The Giza Power Plant” is actually a pretty old song, we’ve been playing that for a while. But there are moments like that on the next record, for 

Sure. Knocking that song out of the bag, just directly, with the power that we had, that was crazy. But what were you about to ask about the production? I’m kind of curious. 

Why did you record to tape? I mean, other than the obvious reason that you want it to sound like a 90s death metal band. But that sounds like, in this day and age, like a ridiculous amount of risk and cost, and time. So I want to know, I guess, why did you choose to do that?

It’s definitely more expensive. I think it was because we’re people who grew up with pretty musical families, our parents were into 70s bands and so on, and we were all of the opinion…. And I remember from a young age my dad telling me: “If you don’t record it live then you’re cheating.” And the only way bands could do it back then was to tape, so it just made sense to try and recreate that same idea, regardless of what genre you're playing.

And did that require you to be better rehearsed coming in? I mean, did you feel the pressure of that?

Oh yeah, absolutely. Every single time, and still. I mean, our next record was recorded to tape, and that was a lot of pressure [laughs].

It's very interesting. It's an interesting choice of artistic limitation. 

I think you need that. You need that, especially today where you can just go in and there’s all these digital programs. I mean, I’m not against that, I guess it depends on the project It’s just that, yeah, limitation is good because otherwise you'll take forever with one idea and just overdo it to the point where it's unlistenable to yourself. With tape, it's very forgiving, it’s warm, when you listen to it it has that specific graininess about it that I think is really nice, because I grew up listening to all these bands, and they all sound like that.

Yeah. My favorite era in metal production is probably ‘90 to ‘92.

I thought ‘93 was pretty good too. I got a little more technical, you could hear a few triggers, but it wasn’t too crazy. 

Yeah, it was great. I'm just saying like peak, like the perfect metal production is something like Seasons in the Abyss and Rust in Peace and Blessed Are the Sick or whatever, albums where everything was just, and in a weird way like this is maybe coming full circle with what we began, when I said l Starspawn sounded smart and dumb at the same time.

Absolutely [laughs].

And that production sounds crisp and beefy at the same time. That's a hard middle to strike.

Yeah.

Anyway, Morris thanks so much for your time. I hope it wasn’t too torturous.

No, man. I had a great time.