Popination Incantation

a series of unhinged personal essays disguised as pub reviews. Today: Incantation Brewery.

I got into Metal (and adjacently, horror cinema) pretty late in life. Unlike many of my friends, as a teen I felt that Metal was horrifically unmusical and ugly. I did have a Gothy fashion sensibility, but I found Metal noisy and horror unaesthetic. I prided myself in my (what I thought was) high-level cultural aesthetic sensibility, and did not abide anything gnarly. 

In my 20s, I began my training in the theatrical combat arts, which meant I had a lot of action and horror movies to catch up on. But even then, I was still listening to folk music, Gregorian chants (remember the ‘90s chant craze?), Yo-Yo Ma’s Bach concertos, and, like, Dead Can Dance. I hadn’t even gotten to my NiN phase till a few years later, so all my music was…well it wasn’t Heavy. Nor was it hard. I always turned my nose up at the ‘noise’ of Metal, till I met Kramer. 

When I worked in the bindery of the copy shop, I was doing both stage combat and was in the aerial dance troupe as well. I played KUVO (the local jazz station) all day as I worked back in the bindery, but if I were up front or in shipping, Kramer’s music would be playing.

Shawn Kramer was a bold, brash, smart dude who was heavily into the Goth scene in Denver, which was rich and multitudinous back then. He always sported a very long dyed-black ponytail held in place down his back with rows of black bands. He wore the black and the chains and all of it, but in a way that was professional enough to pull off in an office service shop. He was one of the only guys there who knew how to work the complicated new computerized copy machines. He was always angry at The Man, and one of the more interesting things about him was that, in all his Gothiness and Metal-headedness, he was an accomplished Ironman triathlete, and would compete in them frequently. And it was him, when he learned I didn’t like Metal, who refused to allow me to continue to do so, and so would make sure he’d play good Metal at me whenever I worked around his area. At the time, it was that one Metallica album. You know the one. So, though harder than most other music I liked at the time, this melodic and passionate album was actually the best gateway to Metal I could have had back then, and I’m sure I would never have loved Pretty Hate Machine as much as I then later did had it not been for Kramer’s Metallica infusion.

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Decades later, as my partner and I started seeing each other after a lifetime away from high school graduation, he became my Virgil through the dark realms of the Metal, Hardcore, and horror that he knew and loved so well. He started me off on a dynamite documentary called Headbanger’s Journey,* which not only gave a fantastic and thorough overview of the genre, but showed the ideology and philosophy behind it. Then, listening from strange microgenres to his high school favorites AC/DC and back again, I started to learn how to listen to it. I equate it to when I first started smoking, and drinking unmixed whiskey–—t’s not only an acquired taste, but one that you have to curate particularly and gradually. And once you’re used to it, you learn to detect the subtleties and find favorite tastes within the more difficult ranges. 

It’s the same with Metal and me—I used to love especially Celtic folk music, and so I started following Eluveitie, and Amon Amarth. I loved Tolkien and D&D and let me tell you the delight I found when I discovered there’s such a thing as pirate Metal, and Viking Metal. I loved jazz, and so when Lorna Shore burst onto the scene, my complicated musical mind was blown. So now I have my own tastes in Metal (and also in horror— I love me some Hellraiser), but I’m always continuously curious too. I’ve learned that there’s a lot to learn from arts that might seem difficult at first.

So what does this have to do with the brewery I visited, called Incantation? Do I digress? No, not really. I’ll explain:

Incantation Brewery

So I walked in to Incantation Brewery and thrash Metal was playing, skulls and candles lined the bar top, and Lord of the Rings was playing on the big screen above it. The Fellowship had just found Moria, and was trying to find a way in. Was this paradise?

Another all Metal and Goth themed bar? Sign me up. This one’s a brewery, making its own offerings on premises, and had a small local reputation of making some pretty interesting flavor combos. It used to be called Jade Mountain Brewing, but they rebranded to Incantation a couple months ago. I’m glad they did, or I might not have schlepped all the way down here to Aurora to try it out.

Incantation takes up a whole corner of a strip mall, kinda like Oddes did, which I’m now beginning to see as a good sign. You know, like when you find that grungy little literal door in the wall in a remote suburban alley, and it’s like, the best homemade Mexican food you’ve ever had ever? Like that. Outside, it’s  got a huge patio with umbrellas for the sun and heat towers for the cold. Sometimes, you do need both in Colorado. Inside, it’s wide open to the patio and goes all the way back into the building where the brewing vats are. Its decor is very much like the classic brewery setup I’ve described before, except with black paint and fake skulls on the corners and pillar candles and a wall full of beautiful depictions of the Grim Reaper, done by a local artist.

Incantation rather epitomizes what it’s like to be Goth in Colorado: the black spooky interior contrasts so much with the bright sunny day pouring in from the big open patio. You can see it in my photos—I can’t quite capture the darkness, because of the amount of natural light. This is a best of both worlds scenario, if I ever saw one.

Any beer in Moria?

Beer is Metal

Speaking of a complex palate for unusual things: I was disappointed to hear, once I had settled down at the bar, that they were out of the Cthulhu: a lime zest / blood orange / squid ink gose. I mean. Right? I wanted to try it so bad, but they had just run out of it. Darn! So I tried these instead:

• Glacial 

It’s often difficult for me to find an IPA that I like. IPAs these days are usually too hazy or citrusy for my tastes. But I asked the advice of the warmly friendly bartender and she suggested the Glacial. I tasted it and totally agreed. It’s a type I’ve never heard of: a Cold IPA, which I guess means that it’s an IPA but made with lager yeast. Crisp, light, but tasty in a way lagers often aren’t. 

• Altar

This was my second experimental choice, a dark lager, and it was yummy, smoky, and drinkable. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to try next, as there were so many different choices with Metal-cryptic-poetic names. And then I noticed the game of chance, suggested at the bottom of their beer list in fine print. It said:

You can’t see how gothly black the place is, because of the beautiful Colorado sunshine.

Roll a d10 and see what you get! There’s the solution to my hard choice. I had to do this—what a fun strange nerdy thing to offer! So I rolled the 10-sided die and I got:

• Dreamfire 

This is a double IPA, which is a strong beer, and so I got a 10 ounce of this one, and made it my last. It had that ripe fermented sweetness that doubles always have, but it was snappy and hearty enough that it was not cloying. I actually liked this quite a bit, and reminded me of the time in my life when I drank many a Hercules.

They don’t offer food at Incantation, as it’s a brewery only. But like many breweries these days, they have a captive food truck that’s connected to them that provides vittles to any peckish beer drinkers. They do have the odd packet of chips, right around the corner near the shelves of board games, too.

This is the end of the Altar and the beginning of the Dreamfire. Which sounds like some kind of D&D adventure campaign…

Death Becomes Her

It’s cool to see another Metal/Horror themed bar around. Seems like this type of environment is popular, if there’s more than just The Crypt and the goth clubs downtown. Seems there’s a lot of us around. Us? You know; people like us:

What type of person feels soothed by horror & darkness? What is is about our psyches (and that of all those who flock to The Crypt) that makes us feel safe and calm in this environment? I might be be more perplexed at those people who are repelled by this kind of stuff, not in a judgy way, but more introspectively, like: is there something about roughness in one’s early life that makes for a darker taste? Do people who are not exposed to real life darkness have a fear of it, because foreign? Or is it just a different way of reacting and coping with such things? I have noticed that horror fans and listeners of the gnarliest death metal tend to be better adjusted, kinder, gentler beings with stronger senses of empathy than others in my experience. Why do you think that is? Is it a mere matter of Eat, Drink, and Be Merry, For Tomorrow We Die?

If you’re curious, here’s the trailer for Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey. The whole thing is on YouTube as well, if this tidbit sparks your interest.