Crypts of the Unknown: Incubator – McGillroy the Housefly

The Crypts of the Unknown harbors many festered treasures. Have you ever come across an album that you enjoy, but seemingly no other human in existence knows about it? Or maybe an album that ticks all the boxes in a style that doesn’t get a lot of love? Oh, and of course, you’ve found this album long after it would have mattered to help the band spread the word… or perhaps it’s just your dirty little secret…

Whatever the case, we here at Goat Review prefer to air our loves to the world, to open the gates of our corroded Crypts to the masses. Today, join us as Scuttlegoat reminisces on Incubator‘s 1992 release McGillroy the Housefly. How did you miss all the buzz?

These are complicated times we are living in. The advantage of the internet age is that small, obscure artists can find an audience years after the fact and get the recognition they deserve. The flipside of this is that there is barely any mystery to music anymore. I know every noteworthy death metal band of the 90s, or close to it and all of them can be grouped into movements, subgroups, styles without much effort. We have decoded the DNA of extreme metal. One artist that did manage to surprise me is Germany’s Incubator. While the band does not hide their underground death metal origins fully — the band logo does showcase the washy, made with a sharpie calligraphy that we all love — a lot of their image is extravagant from the get go. The insectoid warrior, lounging menacingly on a palm tree, appears more psychedelic, albeit nightmarishly so, than many of their contemporaries and is a good symbolic representation of the albums musical content. Oh, and he’s the albums protagonist too. That’s right; McGillroy the Housefly is an actual character, a man bug trapped in another dimension after… well, I don’t know how he got there.

Frankly, most of the story isn’t particularly concrete and thrives more on vibes than anything decipherable, but I appreciate it nonetheless. Alas, what mostly drew me to Incubator was their idiosyncratic way of making death metal, my favorite subgenre if this isn’t clear after years of reading this blog. Other bands that stick out positively from the annals of death metal history either do so by being pioneers or being vastly ahead of the pack. Incubator are neither Morbid Angel (the former case) nor Gorguts (the latter case). Rather, Incubator represent well the time period as a whole, feeling rather at home in the grunge age — I would not have hesitated to book them on a stage with Melvins or Acid Bath. Grunge, sludge, and alternative rock seep into this band’s DNA, similarly how a fly’s DNA can seep into a man’s body. Using hard grooves and lumbering riffs, Incubator remains not mosh pit aggressive but, rather, forcing a consistent nod of the head throughout McGillroy. A lot of the chordal work possesses a dissonant, Voivodian quality which mixes uniquely with the band’s more rock oriented qualities. And they build the psychedelic cherry on top with varied vocals, which range from down-pitched goregrind gurgles to a desperate, drugged up Alice in Chains impression.

Incubator won’t be for everyone, but neither are Demilich. I do not know why the band never found their audience. Was the timing maybe unfortunate for a band that finds softer avenues in death metal without outright being melodic? The brutality arms race was going on and maybe Incubator just didn’t hit the right beats for enough people. Or maybe northern Germany was not enough of an incubator (get it? [editor’s note: yes]) for death metal fame. I for one still hope that Incubator will find their time in the sun and be recognized as the hidden death metal gem that they are.