“It’s weird because I like some punk bands, but I don’t agree with 75 per cent of the politics, but I like the beat and sound of it. I think punks and black metal kids are all about the image and the trend as well as the music,” adds Abaddon Incarnate's vocalist/guitarist contentiously. “Whereas a lot of death metal people are in it for the music. I mean punks take a lot of time with their hairdos, and getting the right spikes and studs on their jackets, it must take forever to get ready to go out at night. Most death metal people just get up and go with a smelly t shirt and the trousers they fell asleep in the night before. Or is that just me?
“Anyway, it would be a bit hypocritical to lambaste capitalism when we are manufacturing and selling CDs, records and merchandise, and selling them for a small profit. While I’m on the subject although I’m hesitant to use an Abaddon Incarnate interview as a platform to air personal political comments, I'd like to say in my humble opinion as a consumer and a citizen - Capitalism is cool, I like it, once it’s ethical. I would prefer more state control over what people can sell and charge. We get a lot of sub-standard food in our supermarkets that has come to us through a lot of poverty and bloodshed. If goods are sourced locally and we are forced to pay a fair price for things, it’s better for everyone and creates a stable local economy. And the government stops this cheap import slave labour type goods. “Back to the lyrics , I’ve often had some goons come up to me complaining that we don’t sing about porn or gore and sadly also a few black metal mafia types about ten or fifteen years ago complaining that we didn’t take Satanism seriously. We are first and foremost a metal band, I like some punk but I’m not trying to break into that scene we just play what we would like to hear and what we enjoy doing. Anyway,” he concludes confrontationally, “if anyone doesn’t like what we do that’s cool, just ignore us and start your own band, yeah?”
Fair enough. Forming in 1994 during the death metal explosion to play sinister, blackened death, Dublin's Abaddon Incarnate did the unlikely and devolved into furious, blasting chaos – where other bands with one foot in the ether would have their music follow suit, disappearing into odd and misjudged latter-day Morbid Angel vistas where the slime lives.
“The sound changed really because we got Meiszko from Nasum to record the second album,” admits Steve. “We basically just told him to do whatever he liked with it and we learned a lot of tricks. We’ve been using his set up ever since. Also we got a bit pissed off playing five minute long death metal songs and preferred to play shorter songs. So everything got grinded up. A lot of the stuff we listened to was grind anyway so it was easy to work with both styles.”
Taking into account their most result assault is a split with longrunning Orange County grind punks Phobia (on Underground Movement), which aside from the odd Morbid Angel riff (“Well, it's 80 per cent of what I listen to,” admits Steve, “Morbid Angel, Immolation, Deicide, Nile, Nocturnus, Incantation, Carcass... so it’s natural, but it when it comes to a rehearsal, it gets simplified and heavier, and grinds up”), is so dependant upon a chassis of toxic d-beat, the name is a bit of a misnomer. Was Disolate Ways already taken?
“Yeah, Cory [Sloan, ex-bassist] and Olan [Parkinson, ex-drummer] wanted to change the name but I wouldn’t let them. Both are gone now anyway. I really like the name. It represents what the lyrics are about and I don’t want some brutal violent name for brutality sake or whatever. Abaddon Incarnate, it's full of esoteric, hidden meanings. And it comes up pretty much first on the trade and distro lists which is handy.”
Spoken like a true slave to capitalism.
Abaddon Incarnate possibly hold the prestigious role of shifting me from death metal and into grind, fantastic transition band.
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