Blood Charm Interview: ‘Absolute Elders’

On Blood Incantation’s album cover Definitely elsewheretwo magma-red pyramids stand alone on a deserted planet, surrounded by pits of lava and mountains as the sky looms above them, richly colored with deep purple and glowing stars. The sky itself is home to a few empty planets, and of course barely readable ones Blood incantation logo at the top in mustard yellow. The hand-painted artwork is as dense as the music within it: vast journeys that, by contrast, make Homer’s epics seem strange; complicated arrangements that rival those of symphonic orchestras; blast beats and shredding so intense you can imagine calluses and blisters forming in real time. All of this is to say that the visual artist behind the record’s cover is as much a visionary as the Colorado death metal band behind the record itself.

Steve Dodd is not an easy man to get in touch with. His home, a small town in Tennessee with a population of about 2,000, is where he has lived and worked for 79 years of his life. He has no computer, no internet access, no mobile phone and no landline. He communicates exclusively through handwritten mail, even with his own family, who also live in the city. Miraculously, Blood Incantation singer and guitarist Paul Riedl found a way to contact Dodd’s sister, who then acted as an intermediary between the two parties. When Riedl wrote a letter to Dodd in early 2023, he initially wanted to have a piece made for their single ‘Luminescent Bridge’. Dodd was unavailable at the time, but he agreed to license some of his paintings from 2018 and 2019 for the front and back of the physical release. This gave him the time he needed to paint what would become the striking original cover Definitely elsewhere.

As Riedl tells me over Zoom, Dodd retired ten years ago, and he hasn’t stopped painting since. He stopped painting for about 30 years until his retirement, freeing up more time to focus on his art than ever before. “He’s the most productive he’s ever been,” Riedl said. “He started right where he left off. He didn’t try to integrate modern technology. He wasn’t trying to reevaluate his technique. He did nothing but keep painting.” The group knew Dodd was the right choice because none of his paintings feature humanoid figures, which was the only caveat they gave to Dodd when expressing their initial hopes for what the cover would look like.

From a narrative perspective, the cover is for Definitely elsewhere continues the story of Blood Incantation’s visual universe. For their full-length debut, 2016 Star spawnastronomical artist Don Dixon portrays a planet freshly hit by a meteor as smoke rises from the ground; a sense of mystery permeates the cover, which is partially answered by Bruce Pennington’s artwork for the follow-up, 2019’s Hidden History of the Human Race. Although it features a humanoid, alien figure, “it’s such an iconic, classic image that you can’t really argue with the accuracy with which the image represents what that music and that album represent,” says Riedl. It is the same cover used for the 1957 science fiction novel Space, time and Nathaniel by Brian Aldiss. Otherwise “we don’t want little green men; we don’t want astronauts; we do not want human civilization to be part of the aesthetic dialogue of Blood Incantation.”

So why is there such a steadfast refusal to include people on the covers of Blood Incantation LPs? “In the future, we want to take something so far that it transcends the limitations of the measly planet Earth,” Riedl explains. “And we also want to inspire the person, wherever he is. So when a reptile looks at our album cover they are not ostracized, or when a humanoid sees the album cover they are not intimidated by the sight of a Pleiadian. We don’t want to have types of figures that exclude someone’s experience of where they are being taken on this journey of music.” Riedl illustrated some preliminary sketches of pyramids and planets to give Dodd a rough idea of ​​what he envisioned, and other than these fairly minimal guidelines Dodd had a free creative hand.

Dodd responded with a letter description of what would become the final cover: The sky will be dark and full of stars above; the pyramids will be a misty shade of blue with violet hues; the crescents are orange with some red on their left side; to the left of the cover will be a giant, red, decaying sun that will cast a reddish glow on the sides of the pyramids; the landscape in general will be painted in brown, red and ocher; the two cracks in front of the pyramids will glow red due to the lava in them; and purple snow will drift along the edges of those crevices. “What are they saying today,” Riedl asks shortly before answering himself with the punchline. “He understood the assignment.”

The band had no notes or revisions for Dodd. All four members loved his painting from the moment they first glimpsed it. Dodd’s cover features elements from all of Blood Incantation’s previous works, from the planetary landscapes and lava to the pyramids and obelisks. In the music video for last year’s ‘Luminescent Bridge’, the single’s artwork is fully animated into a three-dimensional terrain, which takes the viewer through the portal and adorns the two-dimensional cover. Once you pass through the gate, you enter another world, the place depicted Definitely elsewhere. As a result, Dodd isn’t just someone who lent his artistic talents to a death metal band. He is an active participant and collaborator within Blood Incantation’s immersive world-building. Despite his aversion to technology, Dodd’s allegiance to purely analog modes of creation is wildly futuristic.

When I ask Riedl if he would like to work with Dodd again, he says that “it’s more a matter of what we do next.” He continues: “It’s part of creating this consistent narrative in the aesthetic.” That’s a field in which Dodd has unequivocally proven himself, as he can weave the existing visual cues of Blood Incantation into his own sci-fi painting style. Corresponding solely through handwritten letters certainly took a long time, but Blood Incantation’s patience paid off. “It’s easy to get frustrated in this digital age of instant gratification and one-click satisfaction,” says Riedl. “But we are in no hurry. We are not in a hurry to make something impressive.” As both Blood Incantation’s music and Dodd’s paintings demonstrate, impressive art will come with time.