DECEASED – Children Of The Morgue

RELEASE YEAR: 2024
BAND URL: https://the-true-deceased.bandcamp.com/

Let me paint you a picture of a bright unscathed new world where mankind would live in joyous peace and cherish his life on Earth, our children would play in safety and real love would own our hearts, true sincerity lives away from greed…Now let me paint you reality’s picture, it’s a dark unbending world where this killing’s forever and the downfall of man has gotten bad and will only get worse. And this is us today – Deceased “Skin Crawling Progress”

What is death? What does it mean to be deceased? Is it merely, as Christian tradition in apparent no offense to other religions holds, a passage from one form of existence (body and soul) to a more evolved or purer form (soul and spirit) or do we, having died, cease to exist? Well, both the Bible and the Virginian death thrash heavy metallers Deceased, as well as our human experience (even with no one returning to remove all doubt) apparently attest to the latter. That apparently corpses are talking to each other, or even one another in Deceased’s latest fantastic full length Children Of The Morgue²⁰²⁴, to wit, “when you’re gonna die?”, “I’m already dead”, “so am I”, “I am really dead”, “I am really dead”, “I am absolutely dead”, “I am really dead”, “I think I’m dead”, “I think I’m dead” shows Deceased are hell bent on asserting and real life proving (perhaps unbeknownst to them, also after the Bible) that when one is dead they truly are dead in every conceivable way, as body and soul cease to exist and thus they no longer exist in any shape or form, (including the man Jesus Christ for three days and three nights) which flies contrary to the Christian tradition of immediate experience and destination of heaven or hell based on the Platonic teaching of eternal soul, as unbiblical as both are, and, might we not say that it is that Christian tradition, which is nothing more but promotion of a lie that Serpent in the Garden started “dying you shall not die” against God’s “dying you shall die” that is responsible for growing atheism and Christians abandoning their faith, and, of course, it is only one of major lies of traditional Christianity with that effect? Death is death and life is life. That is the truth as far life and death is concerned. One is not like the other and vice versa. Heck, we don’t call death metal life metal, do we?

Now, as far as metal is concerned, there is simply no one quite like Deceased in all of metal. No one. Not in death metal, not in thrash, not in the cross-contaminated veins of death’n’roll or heavy metal. Children Of the Morgue, their 8th full length (not counting all the cover albums and compilations) released last August 30th on (where else?) Hells Headbangers Records, is a blistering reminder—no, a declaration—that Deceased exists in a league entirely their own, a cult institution still outpacing bands half their age, and laughing madly while doing so. I’ve been spinning this beast nonstop, and I can confidently call this their second-best album ever, trailing only behind the apocalyptic grandeur of Fearless Undead Machines¹⁹⁹⁷. I know I called Ghostly White²⁰²¹ their finest hour in my review but, in retrospect, it’s probably their third best because here’s the twist—Children Of the Morgue might be the most fun Deceased have ever sounded, without sacrificing an ounce of their technical brilliance or commitment to metal extremity.

Having started in 1984 as Mad Butcher) and then Evil Axe, Kingsley Eldon “King” Fowley III (bass-1986; vocals; drums-2005, 2010-2012), Mark Adams (guitars-2007), Doug Souther (guitars-1990) and Marcel DeSantos (drums-1986), Deceased since 1985, the Virginians had been the very first band signed to Relapse Records which label they would leave in 2003. With later exchange of DeSantos to Robert Sterzel (1986-1988), Deceased recorded their first demo The Evil Side Of Religion¹⁹⁸⁶ (is there a good side to religion?) and then terrible tragedy struck: Sterzel died in a hit-and-run car accident along with Larry Ruscio and Steven Souther, the brother of his Deceased bandmate Doug Souther, with another friend, Sean Lawrence, sustaining severe injuries. Frankly speaking, I’m surprised Fowley, Adams, Souther and Les Snyder (1988-bass) continued on which speaks volumes for their tenacity, as Deceased did not fold but simply released their excellent debut full length Luck Of The Corpse¹⁹⁹¹ at the time when some of their contemporary kings of thrash metal slowed down to take more heavy metal and hard rock pastures (looking at you, Metallica, after your magnum opus …and Justice For All¹⁹⁸⁸, as shamelessly bassless as it was) but it was the following, even better and buddingly progressive The Blueprints For Madness¹⁹⁹⁵ that gained them both respect and following of the delighted maniacs, as Deceased successfully married classic Death and Obituary to Motörheadish grooves and Iron Maidenic melodiscism, something they expanded into decidedly more progressive territory on their magnum opus, past and present, the phenomenal perfection Fearless Undead Machines¹⁹⁹⁷, my personal point of entry to their catalogue and one of my all time personal favorite albums. Supernatural Addiction²⁰⁰⁰, the last one on Relapse, was a less progressive affair, with an upgrade in both production and melody, but, although worthy of the name Deceased, didn’t quite stir the same excitement in me as its immediate predecessor and the same could be said of the following As The Weird Travel On²⁰⁰⁵ (Thrash Corner Records) and Surreal Overdose²⁰¹¹ (Shrieks From The Hearse) with Ghostly White coming much closer (with me even prematurely pronouncing it their best at the time of the review) but ultimately Fearless has yet to have an equal, an opinion which, as fantastic as it is in its own right, I also extend to, this here, Children Of The Morgue.

So Children is no Fearless but this is still a band firing on all cylinders. The musicianship? Flawless. The creativity? Still top notch and twice as catchy. The production slams—thick, punchy, layered—and the songwriting is intelligent without ever slipping into self-indulgent territory. That’s Deceased’s magic trick: they write songs that are complex, progressive, and brutal, but you’ll be humming them by the second chorus.

At a whopping 55:10 length, out of 12 tracks, or rather, 8 actual songs surrounded by their patented “Edgar Allan Poe may care” instrumentals, it is really hard to pick just a handful but the favorite “Brooding Lament” is a juggernaut, shifting from blistering death to triumphant Iron Maiden harmonies and back again—complete with a hook that may have been haunting me in my sleep. “Children Of The Morgue”, the anthemic title track, is instant classic material. It’s punk, it’s death, it’s catchy as COVID-19 (too soon?), with that main melody reappearing in the closer in a masterstroke of cohesion. “The Reaper Is Nesting” and “The Grave Digger” are pure classic Deceased—dynamic, theatrical, deeply metal, and gloriously unhinged. And then there’s “Farewell (Taken To Forever)”, a closing suite that perfectly encapsulates the album—and honestly, the entire band’s philosophy. It’s both an elegy and an anthem, a death knell and a middle finger to silence. Sure, “Terrornaut” and “Eerie Wavelengths” fall slightly behind—only because the bar is so insanely high. Yet even those tracks would be the standouts on most other bands’ albums.

Again, the bitter irony does not escape me: Deceased, the band who have screamed about death, decay, and zombies since 1985, have themselves been stalked by death offstage. From founding members departing, to tragic losses like David “Scarface” Castillo’s untimely drowning after Ghostly White—they’ve lived the horror they write about. Yet, they press on.

Children Of the Morgue is proof that not only has Deceased survived—they’ve thrived. Like some kind of necromancers of the genre, they raise old-school metal ideals from the grave and reanimate them with fire, chaos, and heart. They never became a nostalgia act, and they never will. Their relevance is not up for debate—it’s etched in riffs, in blood, and in legacy, so I’ll shout it from the rooftops: there is no one like Deceased. And there never will be. You might as well call them the Iron Maiden of death metal, there, I said it, because Children Of The (Damned) Morgue is a triumph born of tragedy, a death metal symphony that refuses to rot. Long may they reign in their haunted kingdom!