Ahhh good ‘ole Middletown, NY. Growing up, my family and I would always pass Middletown, NY, on our way to The Catskills, in upstate NY. I remember this rest stop we would always get breakfast, memories…. This is where Morpheus Descends hail from. They added the Descends to the name in ’92. The band reformed in 2013 with a promise of a boxset, containing all of their material and Dark Descent Records delivered in a big effin way. This is surely one of the greatest boxsets I own and finest reissue Dark Descent has ever unleashed upon mankind.
The boxset contains the bands earliest demos, Accelerated Decrepitude ’91, Adipocere ’91 ep, under their former name, Ritual of Infinity full length ’92, Chronicles of the Shadowed Ones ’94 ep, The Horror of the Truth ’97 ep, From Blackened Crypts ’14 7”, live and rehearsal songs all thrown across 2 cds. OHHH, but wait, there is more. The Visage of Malady DVD [containing 19 live songs spread out across the band’s career], poster, thick booklet containing the release covers, lyrics, pics, flyers-you name it-it’s all in here. Only thing missing is liner notes, like an updated biography, in the booklet and 2 demos. Regardless, Morpheus Descends never sounded so good. The music, on the cds, have been cleaned up a bit and volume slightly tweaked, nothing too crazy. Ritual of Infinity is one of my favorite death metal albums of all time. The band played just kick ass death metal, that was always original to me and nothing really sounded like the album. I thought they may have had some Incantation and maybe a little Gorefest influence, if anything.
The band is supposedly writing a brand new album. I sure as hell hope so, since the new songs on the 7” are stunning. Absolute beastly beyond belief. Brutal, vicious and dark. Very old school sounding and still sounds like Morpheus Descends. The DVD is killer. When I was in Internal Bleeding, we played with the band a few times, most notably at the ’95 Knoxville, TN DeathFest. So we see the band in action from that show and many others. We also get some new live footage from them too. The beginning portion of the DVD has songs in between some public access show interview they did early in their career. It’s totally awesome, mullets and all. The end of the DVD concludes with Ritual of Infinity album cover artist, Brad Moore, on some public access show explaining how he painted the album cover. It’s fairly recent, I believe. Very cool. The quality of the DVD is outstanding, considering a bunch of the live stuff was taken from VHS tapes over 2 decades old. Adds to the charm. This monstrous boxset comes in a nice black box with the band logo on the front.
I have nothing else to add, except I saw the band perform a brutal set at this year’s MDF and spoke to the guitarist afterwards, and the band’s live touring vocalist, before the show and bought a shirt from him. This boxset is already sold out. From what I understand if Dark Descent Records decides to repress this it will not include the DVD. This is an elite set and if you have one like me, count yourself lucky. By far the best reissue this year. Beautifully Brutal!
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Morpheus Descends is one of the great, unsung Death Metal bands in my opinion. They should be held in just as high regard as Cannibal Corpse, Suffocation, Immolation and Incantation.
Pyrexia deserved a lot more love too, come to think of it…
on Sep 14th, 2015 at 10:38…Baphomet too, haha
on Sep 14th, 2015 at 10:42AR- I agree with all that you said. Loved Baphomet. Their second album, under their other name, was so killer. \m/
on Sep 14th, 2015 at 13:33One of the finest oldschool death metal bands and next to Immolation maybe the best death metal band to crawl out of NY! Love em!
on Sep 15th, 2015 at 07:56I was in Indianapolis, this past weekend, and I hung with my old friends MORPHEUS DESCENDS, at the Indy Death Fest. It looks like I will once again be doing some artwork for the masters of morbid metal!!
on Oct 5th, 2015 at 14:56