(written by Islander)
We have some previous experience with the Finnish death metal band Morbific. In considering music (which we premiered) from their second album Squirm Beyond the Mortal Realm, we described it as “undeniably raw and foul, well-calculated to channel sensations of disease, putrefaction, and madness while giving your bones a brutal beating — and creating an atmosphere of supernatural horror while they do all that.” We added that Morbific were also “ridiculously good at making their creations head-moving and ‘catchy’ as well as hideous.”
More recently our contributor Chile caught their performance at the 2024 edition of Oslo Deathfest and wrote this vivid description of what ensued:
…the crowd goes wild in a fantastic display of great chemistry between the band and audience, turning the bar area into a warfield of bodies strewn on filthy riffs stretching as far as the eye can see…. Bursting through the abdomen of the stage like some kind of extraterrestrial, Morbific are all teeth and snarl in a seemingly simple, yet very effective display of putrid brutality.
And now this rotten-to-the-core death metal band are upon us again, with a third album entitled Bloom of Abnormal Flesh set for co-release on April 21st by Memento Mori and Me Saco un Ojo (who also co-released the band’s last album), again adorned with blood-congealing cover art by Chase Slaker. And again, we have a song premiere off the album. The name says it all: “Crusading Necrotization“.
Since their last album Morbific have clearly retained their relish for a style of death metal that’s revolting, in both senses of the word — the music would be deemed repulsive by 99.99% of surface-dwelling music fans, but even sewer-dwelling aficionados of death metal will hear a form of queasiness and chaos that’s genuinely macabre and resists being confined.
“Crusading Necrotization” is undeniably ghastly and grotesque. The guitars, which aren’t murky but also aren’t too clean, miserably squirm and moan like someone suffering from a necrotizing infection, creating a harmony of pitiful agony (though the riffing might also make one envision a fattened crawling maggot that hasn’t yet completely sated its hunger for decaying flesh).
But what also happens in the song’s opening phase are sounds of monstrous and malignant heaviness — pounding bursts of brutality and gruesomely groaning bass vibrations.
With a truly disgusting subterranean gurgle leading the way, the band then pick up the pace, pounding and hammering faster and causing the riffage to generate a more feverish but still diseased pulse. Those horrific gutturals return, vomiting the words, and as they do the music crawls and squirms again.
But Morbific continue to shift gears and change the horrid visions they’re creating, speeding up and jerking the listener back and forth, and, with drums blasting, letting their flesh-eating riffage go wild in a convulsion of macerating madness, but also segueing into a crazed blurting delirium and then frothing like a turbulent cesspool.
Through it all, the band inflict slugging grooves, earth-throbbing subterranean undulations, and the kind of cavernous and crazed vocal horrors that would send average citizens running for the hills.
And it’s still true — Morbific still know how to make their music head-moving and head-hooking.
Memento Mori will handle the CD version of Bloom of Abnormal Flesh, and Me Saco Un Ojo will provide the LP vinyl edition. For more info, check the links below. And below that, take an antiemitic and check out the previously released album track “Panspermic Blight” — further evidence that the new album should place Morbific in the modern global vanguard of truly abominable death metal.
MEMENTO MORI:
http://www.memento-mori.es
https://www.facebook.com/memento.mori.label
ME SACO UN OJO:
https://www.mesacounojo.com
https://www.facebook.com/mesacounojo
https://mesacounojo.bandcamp.com
MORBIFIC:
https://www.facebook.com/morbific
https://morbific.bandcamp.com