Album Review: Retromorphosis – Psalmus Mortis
Reviewed by Dan Barnes
Rising from the ashes of their long-defunct technical death metal outfit, Spawn of Possession, come the new band, Retromorphosis, made up of eighty percent of SoP, with the addition of ex-Decrepit Birth drummer, KC Howard.
When I hear the words “Swedish”, “Death” and “Metal” all used in the same sentence my mind immediately goes to the melodic Gothenburg sound pioneered and perfected by At the Gates, rather than the old-school brutality of the legends that are Entombed, Dismember and Unleashed.
For this debut album Retromorphosis have gone back to the proverbial well, channelled their inner Nihilist-loving younger selves and blended that Eighties sound with Spawn’s technicality to offer and album that pay homage to the past, without neglecting to pave the way into the future.
In his book on the genesis of the Death Metal scene, Choosing Death: The Improbable History of Death Metal and Grindcore, author Albert Mundrian discusses the influences of not only Venom and Motörhead, and the UK82 and USHC scenes of the time, but also the easier access to splatter-cinema through the new video markets.
The fetid and rotten sounds, engineered into those seminal releases by Scott Burns, can be heard replicated throughout Palmus Mortis – Songs for the Dead, or something like, I imagine – with guitars chugging out dirty riffs and drums blasting away. Vanished arrives after the intro section of Obscure Exordium, landing with no small amount of groove and a barking vocal.
Never to Awake rampages along at a rapid pace, its solo screams as the fretboard runs and blitzkrieg guitar attack belie the added technical elements; final track, Exalted Splendour is full of bludgeoning drums and unfriendly, Benton-like vocals, while the tile track is Obituary-esque in its opening bars.
Rarely far from Retromorphosis’ musical palette are the technical elements that dominated Spawn of Possession’s sound. Never to Awake’s unrelenting pace is tempered by the addition of a keyboard breakdown, and the cosmic swirling of Morbid Angel-influenced guitar parts, warning of the coming of the Old Ones as much as anything Lovecraft authored.
With some of the least Death Metal song titles you’ll find, Aunt Christie’s Will and The Tree are two of the places on Psalmus Mortis where guitarists Jonas Bryssling one-time Obscura/ Nerophagist member, Christian Muenzner, can really show off their chops. Aunt Christie wills us soaring strings alongside fast, hook-laden riffs; The Tree is Retromorphosis at their most technically adept, blending the ethereal with the brutal in a mind-bending assault.
Vocalist Dennis Röndum turns in a stellar performance, navigating his way through the stylistic and tempo changes and, once again, the bassist - this time Erlend Caspersen - is the unsung hero of the whole damn show, holding all together with a fat-stringed swagger.
Machine sits as the penultimate track of the album, but apart due to its almost ten-minute runtime. It’s a sprawling epic of a tune, blending pestilent riffs with epic atmosphere; dank and dirty one minute, yet light and airy the next, blasts and technicality sit comfortably together in a song that feels far briefer that its duration suggests.
Psalmus Mortis is a modern sounding death metal album that never seems to try to be more than it sets out to be: a fine example of an old school record, with some additional features. As that, the lads of Retromorphosis have lit the touchpaper on a new chapter of their musical journey.
Mundrain, Albert. Choosing Death: The Improbable History of Death Metal and Grindcore. Los
Angeles, CA: Feral House, 2004
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