Morpheus was a short-lived death metal band hailing from Sweden, notable for featuring the infamous black/death duo of Sebastian Ramstedt and Johan Bergebäck, who would go on to terrorize the black/death/speed metal scene together in bands like Black Trip, Nifelheim, and most famously, Necrophobic. Unlike a lot of other bands active in the Stockholm death metal scene circa 1993, these guys weren't interested in the stereotypical (but now iconic) "Sunlight death metal" sound, and actively tried to go as far away from it as possible - both in terms of production and influence. This would ultimately prove successful, as the album sounds nothing like your typical "Swedeath" release, and rather feels more American, seemingly taking some influence from the Florida scene, particularly Deicide, while filtering it through some more intricate songwriting likely inspired by early tech death progenitors like Atrocity, Disharmonic Orchestra, and probably Atheist, too.
This all makes for an interesting listen, as tracks like "God Against All" and "Among Others" bring out some ridiculously catchy (and dare I say delicious) fucking death metal riffs that feel very strict and to-the-point, where other tracks like "The Third Reich (3797 AC)" showcase the band's ability to slow things down and experiment a bit while, I must stress, still keeping the riffs very catchy and powerful. The tracks that focus more on the experimental side of the band - like "Of Memories Made (The God of Dreams)" feature a lot of cool, interesting riffs and actually quite impressive for a band of their age. The songwriting manages to juxtapose these two styles quite well, keeping things interesting and fresh and never allowing the songs to overstay their welcome, even though the songs are a bit longer than your usual death metal song.
The vocals of David Brink are certainly an acquired taste, and may turn off many listeners, but I actually like his performance - to me, he's got the typical guttural death growl but with a slight sort of "shouting" quality that makes him sound really commanding and angry. If I had to compare him to anyone, it would be a weird fusion of Glen Benton and what Nicke Andersson did on "Clandestine". In some places, he really does go a bit "overboard" with some really intense bellowing which might sound comical to some (not unlike Alex Krull's infamous performance on Atrocity's "Todessehnsucht"), and even I wouldn't necessarily consider Brink to be a particularly great vocalist, but without any question he at least has his own style...something which can't be said of many death metal vocalists, for sure!
The real elephant in the room, on this album, is the production. Put simply, the production of this album is awful. While it's relatively clean and clear-sounding, the individual components (like the guitar tone, for example) are without any question very weak and don't hold a lot of power or definition. In the CD I have, the band explains that in their search for a different studio to provide a unique sound (to prevent them from being labelled a Sunlight clone - as I mentioned earlier), they chose an absolutely horrible studio with an idiot engineer who, for example, ruined the album's drum sound by accidentally putting a cup of coffee on the mixing board, which ended up ruining the bass drum tracks and replacing them with a small artificial "clicking" sound, which he simply boosted to resemble the sound of a bass drum. That said, while I think this album could definitely have benefitted from being recorded elsewhere (even as Sunlight), I wouldn't say the production was as bad as many people have claimed it to be...that's because, while the tone might be shit, you can still hear the (fucking awesome) riffs...you can hear everything, really! This is something that puts Morpheus a step above say, Malicious Onslaught, where the music just sounded like a total fucking mess to begin with and the production renders it damn near impossible to even hear what is going on let alone enjoy it. To me, the awful production in some ways actually benefits the quirkiness of the band's songwriting & tendencies and in some strange way, actually helps the album stand out where a more traditional production might have failed, but that's pure speculation...
Perhaps it's just me, maybe I'm just the kind of listener who has the ability to sort of "shut out" bad production and ignore things I consider to be superficial (like weak tones or sterile production) in favor of just enjoying the music as long as I'm able to hear what's going on and like the actual meat & potatoes of the music - I mean, my favorite Napalm Death album is "Harmony Corruption", afterall...that should really say everything you need to know about me.
At any rate, while Morpheus' sole album might be pretty fucking quirky and end up sounding like a raw potato, it's an album that deserves your attention. I wouldn't call it a masterpiece or even a classic - in fact, this style of jittery, quasi-technical Florida-esque death metal was actually done much better by Seance on their 1992 masterpiece "Fornever Laid to Rest", but I don't think that in any way counts "Son of Hypnos" out as worthy of a spot on the shelf of anyone who considers himself a collector of brutal, old school death metal.
In all honesty, I should not know that this album exists. The only reason I know of it is due to encountering it while searching for original copies of death and thrash albums, an expedition on which I encountered a copy of this for sale for the modest sum of $800. Information about this band and this album was scarce - this is your typical early-90's death metal gig that put out a record and fell apart. Since I was intrigued by the price tag but not at all interested in paying it, I went about decidedly more illicit and less legal means of hearing this album's contents. It's a damn good thing I did, because this album is a disaster.
I may just be a sucker for many of metal's more self-indulgent tropes, but from the outside, this looks like a promising album. Even though there are far too many bands that have tried to name themselves Morpheus or some derivative thereof, I like the band name. I like the logo and the album title. All of these parts together blend together with the song titles into a cohesive theme centered around the darkness of the Greek gods. I find the cover strangely and inexplicably evocative of Marduk's Dark Endless. However, there's something critically important for a prospective listener to notice about the cover art. The image is pillarboxed, as it was blatantly intended for a cassette. Presumably, Step One Records realized the astonishing dearth of quality this album possessed and just slapped the cassette artwork onto a black background and shipped it out. Why bother putting effort into dressing up something this bad?
The opening of the first track, Depths of Silence, is an excruciatingly poor attempt at sounding menacing and it brings with it an overwhelming sense that what you are about to hear is both someone's best effort and also genuinely, persistently terrible. It would be a considerable improvement if this track consisted of four minutes and seven seconds of silence. In fact, I think this is the worst possible choice the band could have made from their catalog for opening their album. Depths of Silence is probably the weakest song of the lot, constantly stumbling all over itself while making the listener cringe from a distance. Several problems become apparent within the first minute; the band has a remarkably poor sense of how to structure a song, the production is hollow and far too clean, the drums have no force of impact whatsoever, and the vocalist has no idea what he's doing. Spatially speaking, the guitars sound like they're performing somewhere else entirely separate from the rest of the band. Maybe not in a different room, per se, but somewhere above and out to the side. It could possibly be an interesting effect if used correctly, such as maybe on the right kind of atmospheric black metal album, but that's not what we're dealing with here.
The quiet drums and the whiny, isolated guitars are one thing, and they would be forgivable if the songwriting was of decent quality. However, what I find the most difficult to look beyond is the vocal delivery of David Brink, who sounds like Glenn Danzig attempting to impersonate Glen Benton. This man cannot do a proper death growl, which would be fine if he just found something that worked for him and stuck with it, but instead he tries to do it anyway, and then he attempts to change his style either at random intervals or because he seems to think he's tried one thing for too long. None of this comes across in a way that seems believable or at all sincere. The best death metal vocalists make the listener believe that they are threatening through the sheer force of their presence. Brink sounds like he's attempting to take Slipknot in a new direction. Although it may seem like an odd way to describe it, perhaps the best way I can put it is that the vocal delivery sounds immature. It's like listening to a high school metalhead without any discernible talent.
Stylistically, when this album isn't busy soiling itself in its poor attempts to be extreme, it's essentially an early death and roll album. This direction was undoubtedly inspired by their fellow countrymen Entombed, and at the album's very best, it sounds vaguely like an Entombed tribute band. There are a few moments on Son of Hypnos (such as in The Third Reich 3797 A.C., the best track available here) where things stop being so overtly bad for long enough that it begins to sound like a passable but forgettable death metal album, and everything seems okay until it all starts to flail wildly out of control again and you realize that Left Hand Path preceded this by three years and you could just be listening to that instead. In fact, that's what I recommend you do. If you buy this album, the joke is on you.
Hearing an album with kickass riffs and lackluster production is a letdown, but hearing an album with crappy riffs and polished production grinds my teeth. I’ll explain one band that excelled in the riff department and fell flat on their face because somebody wasn’t paying attention to the production job. Not only that, but these guys had to hear it every step of the way, which means they dropped the ball, too.
I hear bloodcurdling songs like “Through The Halls Of Darkness,” the poignant “Momento Mori,” and the crushing “The Third Reich 3797 A.C.” and I must bow down to the riffs that lay within. Nocturnus was the king of fast-paced, scientific riffs that were usually more intelligent than the listener. If they controlled that sector, then Morpheus is the diplomat of doomy, scientific riffs that sometimes outsmart the listener. There’s an old-school death / doom appeal brought about by the riffs, which are futuristic and antique; bending, morphing, melodic, and slithering with a raspy, brittle tone.
However, that’s as far as this album goes in terms of greatness. The rest of it I can’t hold my head up high to, as the production absolutely massacred any chance this album had at being a masterpiece. For one, everything is much rawer and crustier than it needs to be, which means that Son Of Hypnos has a lifeless personality. It sounds more like a scrapped together rehearsal than a full-length effort. The lower audibility was strike one, but lack of any power whatsoever (no bass boom, no artillery drums, no vocal strength, etc.) means that we have a very inflated album; air doesn’t do as good a job imitating pure muscle. The next hefty piece after the guitars (and by a very wide margin) are the vocals, which sounds like a pig trying to growl. Not pig squealing, but just a barn hog coughing up all that guck from its throat in an attempt to hurl or exhale some nasty barks. Rapping or one word at a time, these clear (mixing wise) vocals aren’t that appealing and only get repetitive and annoying after the first track.
The drumming sounds like marching / band class drumming with their clarity and lack of mastering. Sometimes it works (thinking old-school punk), but in this case it makes the drumming very metallic, live sounding, and without any back-up; it goes against the guitars and their wicked ways. As for the bass, I can’t hear it at all; maybe one out of five songs, but nothing that catches my ear during casual listens. To me, it’s just the thin guitar tone, Brink’s hoggish barks, and this band-class drummer – if you are a bassist, do not entry. To add onto the pile, the songwriting itself doesn’t add anything. Riffs can only do so much, but lame production and hardly any group support only runs directionless efforts into the ground.
I see this album as very black and white with little breathing room or personality. I can be very picky about production, but this album deserves so much more. It has vibes of Necrophobic and Nocturnus primarily because of the riffs, but unfortunately everything else about the album isn’t as helpful. Good to know that band members Ramstedt and Bergebäck were actually utilized for real, as they’re now (as of writing this) in Necrophobic and have been for quite some time; beats Morpheus by a longshot.