Monday, February 22, 2010

Morpheus Descends - Ritual of Infinity (1992)

Retardedly primitive and heavy death metal with that percussive New York sound. Linear, riff salad song structures that don't meander off into irrelevance like most current technical death metal bands. This is not a random collection of upbeats and pinch harmonics; these songs detail one path of a branched narrative.

Detuned power chord melodies swirl in sonic whirlpools before coalescing into an absolutely devastating riff that just completely blindsides you. See "Proclaimed Creator" for an example. This song gets my vote for having the most crushing death metal part ever recorded.

Also, the production is hilarious, and each kick drum hit does that weird volume swelling thing, which actually makes this a lot more primitive and heavy. Hey Andy, why does that happen again? Basically, I'm going to steal some of these ideas for Like Rats.

8 comments:

Patrick said...

I'm not listening to it (and haven't heard it for a minute), but the volume swelling thing sounds like applying a gate during mastering - a loud quick noise like a kick would fire the gate, and with a slow attack it would kind of sweep the volume up and then back down.

This is a semi-educated guess.

RSS said...

Fuck yeah! This album is so fun. And I think that kick drum thing is just a I'm-A-New-Yorker-So-Fuck-A-midi-Trigger kinda thing.

Andy said...

It's not a gate, it's due to stereo buss compression. This is done in the mastering process to boost the overall volume of the recording and tame unruly transients.

In death metal, the kick drum tends to be the loudest element of a recording. The kick hits, triggering the compressor to slam down, and as soon as that kick is gone, the compressor releases.

If there is heavy compression and/or the attack and release times of the compressor are not adjusted properly, you can hear it as the weird volume swelling thing. This artifact is known as "pumping".

That riff 2~ minutes makes me want to destroy my body.

Todd said...

DESTROY... YOUR BODY... FOR MORPHEUS DESCENDS

Todd said...

Oh and thanks for that explanation I knew you could do it

Evan Davis said...

Hey Todd I finally downloaded this and am really digging it. Good job!

Todd said...

Don't thank me, thank Morpheus Descends!

Anonymous said...

the writer of this blog is like a bastard child of sr prozak and some effeminate hipster