People still come back to see Morphosis



Hello Vinny, Thanks for doing this interview for BRUTALISM. Tell me, what's happening in the Morphosis camp these days?
Hey Connor. We're busy in rehearsals with a new drummer right now before we do some gigs in a couple of weeks

Yourself and George are long time friends, how did you guys get the band together and tell us a little about it?
I went to school with his brother, which is how I got to know him. He started the band fuckin years ago. After a couple of demos we split up and reformed after 10 years.

Your album, "Rise Of The Bastard Deities", is an absolute cruncher of an album, What were your influences for this record? The coverwork is excellent, tell me abit about it.
It's all about the brutality. There's 20 years of influence in there. Once it sounds heavy and agressive we pretty much let the material take it's own course...
Our drummer at the time, Sam, did the artwork on it. It's a variation on some Gustav Dore stuff. He did a fair bit of alteration to it and added some of his own work too as opposed to just copying the original.

I remember when I was younger, hearing your demos, I heard huge Suffocation influences, though those seem to have disappeared. Was this intentional? Were you, like myself, a huge Suffocation fan at the time?
Yeah, there would have been an early Suffocation influence alright. I don't think we ever sounded like them though. I was really into their first EP and album. Not crazy about what they're doing now though.

This new album is the first outing on record for new vocalist, Squelch, I feel that he has given new personality to the band, although his voice is different to that of the demos. Has he brought his own twist to the Morphosis stylings? Does he write lyrics etc?
Of course he has. The stuff was already written before he joined so he's not responsible for any lyrics. He had his own input into the final arrangements like everybody else did.

You guys are on Irish label, Senitinal, how has that been for you? Have they offered you much support with the release?
We've known Scobes at Sentinel for years so we knew we'd have no problems with him. He's done a lot in terms of promotion and advertising. Can't be easy for any label anymore with the ammount of downloading that's going on now.

Any overseas gigs that folk may go check you out at?
Doing this year's Way of Darkness fest in Germany and then we're heading into -Poland while we're over. We're filling in for AI for two Irish dates with Avulsed as well as Steve has broken his collar bone and is out of action for a while. We've no more live work untill the new year as Squelch will be away.

Now I know that you have been absolutely plagued by drummer problems. What happened Sam (who recorded drums on the album)? And who has replaced him since? And are they in for the long haul?
Fuckin drummers... Sam lost interest in playing death metal fairly early on and wasn't going to be around for too long once the album was recorded. He stayed to get the job done though and came back recently as a one off to do the Bolt Thrower gig with us. We got Jason from Primal Dawn in to help us out and he opted to stay on and join the band. It just didn't work out though and we never gelled properly. We thought we were fucked when Andy came foreward. We're very happy with him both playing and attitude wise. Hopefully we have a deacent stable line up now.

Vinny, I used to love chatting with you about adding more speakers to guitar rigs etc. Do you guys always go out with full rig with the intention of destruction every time? Being a one guitarist band, do you feel Morphosis will ever have 2 guitar players? Has it ever had 2 guitar players?
If it's our own headlining gig we'll bring all the backline. Otherwise we don't as gear is already supplied.
We've had two guitarists several times in the past. Myself and George have an unusual back picking style though, so using another guitarist usually sounded noisey and messy as the playing style was slightly different. I don't see us ever going back to two guitars.

You guys played a show down Southend-On-Sea, with both of our good friends, Bludgeon, how was that for you? Did UK give you a good response?
That was a good one. It was just as the smoking ban was introduced over there... something that hasn't helped live bands. People still came back in to check us out. It was great to hook up with Bludgeon on their home turf.

Thanks for you time, a pleasure as always, Vinny, any thing to add? Last rites?
Cheers for this Connor. Who's round is it?
Band:
Interviewer: Connor
Aug 17, 2010

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