Morphosis | ‘Rise Of The Bastard Deities’

Like many bands highly rated in Ireland’s popular metal lore, much of Morphosis’ appeal is historical. It’s taken so long for the band to come back in full gigging and recording form that the intervening years gave given plenty of time for legend to grow.

They carved out their name, and of that there’s no doubt. They’ve gigged sporadically over the last year or two, but have been otherwise quiet since their nineties heyday. Are they still relevant in 2009?

In as much as a recalibration of people’s death metal tastes are happening then yes. Just.

They play it the old way, the dirty, heavy way, which is increasingly appreciated as time goes on. That very quality, though, has located them in a time and place that musically, it could be said, we’ve moved on from.

Stick on their decade old (and essential) ‘Malicious Malfiguration’ tape nowadays and it almost sounds as fresh as this. Which means one of two things: either it was so far ahead of its time as to be out of this world, or that the band haven’t really moved on much. The latter is the case. That means it had really ought to be awesome at this stage of the game.

Good old school death metal done well can be one of life’s greatest kicks. That’s not what the problem is here. The problem is that you just have to step back a bit and say: ‘if this was any other band, would it grab me?’

Because being perfectly and rather harshly honest only about four tracks here out of ten truly would.

Initially, the similarity to Abaddon Incarnate’s crustfuck ‘Nadir’ album is striking. The guitar tone takes the same cues from Nasum, while the drumming is comparably modern in attack. The standout tracks – ie the fast ones – like the great ‘Preyed Upon’, ‘Shred’ and ‘Rabid’ are almost as good as their colleagues.

I find the rest a little lumpen though, and stuck in an era that was already oversaturated a very long time. Part of the problem here as well is a slight sloppiness. Simple timing improvements could be made almost everywhere, improvements that would have brought a greater focus and killing efficiency to this bloodthirsty death metal. Scummy and dirty is good. But so is proper delivery.

It’s not endemic, and I confess to listening with a pedant’s ear. But it’s there, and it could have been cured. Overall, when placed against recent mucky death metal gems like Tribulation’s last one, it’s just too much of its genre and not really striving at a better creative goal. No harm in that, as death metal for the sake of it can be wonderful – but only when the songwriting is.

This album’s best work is bunched together at the end, and the whole thing seems to have been rushed– something of an irony given they’ve otherwise waited over a decade. Aside from this album’s best cuts, which could have made a devastating EP, the rest is absolutely average. It’s cool, dirty death metal, but not a great deal more.

2.9 / 5 – Earl Grey ::: 26/05/09