By David E. Gehlke
If former MORBID ANGEL frontman David Vincent had his way, then VLTIMAS, his semi-new supergroup with ex-MAYHEM guitarist Rune “Blasphemer” Eriksen and CRYPTOPSY drummer Flo Mounier, would be his priority, and not his MORBID ANGEL offshoot I AM MORBID or the reactivated TERRORIZER or even his outlaw country gig. It’s a notable admission from a guy who could easily tour the wheels off MORBID ANGEL‘s back catalog or his lone TERRORIZER outing, 1989’s legendary “World Downfall”, of which he played bass. But after two top-notch long-players starting with their 2019 “Something Wicked Marches In” debut and now their forthcoming “Epic” sophomore outing, one starts to make sense of why Vincent wants to give VLTIMAS most of his attention. It’s one of the rare extreme metal supergroups that lives up to its billing.
Rather than being a horserace between Eriksen and Mounier, “Epic” is all about the “song,” a happening that emerged when Eriksen and Mounier joined Vincent at his Texas ranch to assemble the album. And Vincent has a few new tricks up his sleeve, particularly a new style of death metal “singing” that puts a twist on one of the most enduring and familiar voices within the genre. With the release of “Epic” coming around the bend, BLABBERMOUTH.NET and Vincent caught up to discuss its ins and outs.
Blabbermouth: You said in the album bio for “Epic” that you’re not a “short attention span guy.” Can you elaborate on it?
David: “Sure. I’d be happy to. I’m old school, as anybody who knows me knows. I just recall when I used to listen to records as a child, I would get a record that I wanted to hear and I would sit down in front of my record player and I’d start with song one on side A and go all the way to the last song on side B, all the while looking at the liner notes, photos and cover. I was giving it my full attention. If it was something I liked, then I wanted to be absorbed by it. I wanted to be taken on the journey and hear the story that the artist was trying to tell me. That was important to me. These days, it seems like when I watch the younger generation listening to stuff, one person will come up and pull out their cell phone and ask, ‘Have you heard this new track?’ Then they’ll play 10 to 15 seconds of it. Then go, ‘Check this one out.’ There’s no investment from the listener’s standpoint into what’s being played, the songwriting, the depth behind it, the meanings behind things. That’s very foreign to me because if something is worth even a second of my time, it’s going to get every bit of the attention that it deserves unless it’s simply not worth it, and in this case, you move on. It’s the same with the movies or if I go to a show. I’m trying to watch the band and people are asking me for a photo: ‘I’m here to see the band. Wait until they’re done. That’s rude. My attention is on the band, so should yours.’ It’s this general kind of surface-surfing that folks seem to do so much these days that has never been important to me. If I care to do something, I care to do it right. My definition may be different than someone else’s, but that’s my definition.”
Blabbermouth: Do you, then, buy into the idea that there are too many options to the point where things are disposable?
David: “I agree with your sentiment, but I don’t agree with it in practice. If something is worthless, then it should take no time. If I’m watching a television program and if it’s something I really like, I don’t answer the phone. I may put it on pause for a second to use the facility or what have you, but I want to be absorbed by things. It spawns imagination and breaks the mold of so much incoming. It’s funny — pretty much everyone knows that virtually everyone has a cell phone. You send someone an email and they give you an out-of-office reply — I don’t know what that means. If you work for yourself, you’re always in the office or simply don’t reply or don’t answer the phone. It’s okay to do that too. You give the…
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