There are reunions, and then there is literal resurrection. Most of the former are tedious: aging men in cargo shorts plodding through their back catalog with all the ferocity of a mid-level Pantera cover band (looking at you, Arch Enemy), while the label slaps "legendary" on a press release no under 65 one will ever read.
Morbid, however, are another matter entirely. They navigate on a different plane of existence.
Founded in 1985 as Scapegoat before assuming their infamous title a year later, they became one of those mythical "proto-underground gangs" of black/death metal. Dead (Per Yngve Ohlin) dramatically moved on to Mayhem where his shadow still lingers to this day. The rest dissolved into rumour and tape-trading mystique. By 1991, after Dead's suicide, in which Euronymous' actions were blamed by many, Morbid were nothing more than a historical footnote. Why do I keep talking about Dead and Euronymous, two (ex) members of Mayhem, on an article about the death metal band Morbid? Let's find out.
Until January 7th, 2023. On that night in Stockholm, something no one could have anticipated: a true Morbid reformation, not with anonymous "guitar hero" replacements, but with uncanny familial heirs. At the microphone: Necrobird (Daniel Ohlin), Dead's younger brother, whose very voice seems genetically encoded with the same spectral affliction. At the guitar: Grim (Heinrich Aarseth), nephew of Øystein "Euronymous" Aarseth, drafted from the war metal outfit Warkvlt after the original guitarist "Ivan Marcus" Klacke's inconvenient incarceration. Thus, in one stroke, the tortured bloodlines of Dead and Euronymous were woven together... a coincidence so strange it borders on the metaphysical.
Morbid, the Story of a Death Metal Resurrection
Of course, cynicism abounded. Extreme metal in 2023 was hardly a fertile soil...
A bloated menagerie of bands armed with seven-string guitars, Meshuggah presets, and a lyrical obsession with hamburgers and horror movies masquerading as "brutality." The death metal scene, to put it bluntly, had become a refuge for gym-bro groove addicts and YouTube technicians who mistake practicing scales for writing songs. Slam "bands" - and I use the term loosely - churned out breakdowns designed less for atmosphere than for synchronised karate kicks in suburban VFW halls. The underground has never felt so domesticated, so sterile, so utterly safe.
How Morbid Took Over Death Metal...
And then came Rotting Tomb Carnage (April 1st, 2024), which detonated in the midst of this mallcore mediocrity like a plague bomb.
From its opening riff, Grim (Heinrich Aarseth) declared himself the rarest of commodities in modern metal: a guitarist who actually writes songs. His style is neither slavishly retro nor self-indulgently technical; rather, it's a sharpened evolution of late 1980s proto-death metal morbidity... jagged yet purposeful, melodic without sentimentality, brutal without banality. Where most of his peers confuse endless tremolo for atmosphere, Grim understands that menace lies in the intervals, in the way a riff bends and claws its way into memory.
Also read: Five Death Metal Songs With The Most Brutal Riffs!
And then there is Samalek (Anders Erik Nordström), the band's drummer. While many contemporary percussionists have reduced themselves to little more than human metronomes (draped in click tracks, drowning in triggered sterility, and that is if they even do the drumming themselves and don't delegate it to EZ Drummer altogether a la Napalm Death), Samalek plays like a beast unchained. His blasts are not tidy little digital blurts but actual hardcore, ferocious eruptions of barbaric demonic energy. His fills cavort on the edge of collapse, and his double-bass rolls possess that organic heft modern drummers have apparently forgotten in their pursuit of clinical "tightness." He sounds, in short, like a demon possessed, which is precisely what this type of music demands.
Necrobird (Daniel Ohlin), too, astonishes. He does not impersonate his brother, nor should he try. Instead, his delivery feels like an eerie mutation of the same DNA - shrieks and howls with that uniquely Scandinavian undertone of frostbitten despair. It is unsettling in the best way possible. Haunting and disturbing. And when paired with Mordicor (Justin Gallows) and his subterranean bass rumble, the band achieves the kind of density modern productions desperately strive for but never achieve.
The Rest of Morbid's Discography is Also Stellar
The follow-up albums, Necrotic Fairytales and Skewered Beyond, confirmed that this was no one-off séance. The former reveled in grotesque whimsy, a surreal counterpoint to its savagery, while the latter was sheer evisceration, a gauntlet that should be hurled at every half-baked "brutal" band clogging Metal Blade and Century Media. Each release has emphasised what Morbid possesses that their contemporaries lack: conviction, talent and sheer ferocity.
The irony is rich. In an age where every aspiring death metal "unit" is armed with superior equipment, endless YouTube tutorials, and all the studio trickery in the world, it is Morbid - reanimated from the grave, staffed by the heirs of the genre's most infamous figures... who sound vital and dark as ever. Grim's riffcraft, Samalek's bestiality, Necrobird's spectral voice, Mordicor's bass lines as living weapons. This isn't your everyday modern Swedeath metal nu-mallcore band, far from it.
Even more death metal brutality to come...?
So yes, one may marvel at the genealogical oddity of Dead's brother and Euronymous' nephew forging new extremities together. And this was done almost by accident. While Necrobird and Grim have known each other through the Warkvlt Legions, they had never collaborated on a project of such importance as Morbid. It was only the arrest and incarceration of original guitarist Klacke (Ivan Marcus Angus Klack) that "forced" the band to use their trump card. Daniel Ohlin, Heinrich Aarseth... what's next, Varg Vikernes himself to complete the trilogy?
But the real miracle is much simpler than genealogy and Jungian pseudo-psychology: Morbid make death metal dangerous again. They have clawed themselves out of the tomb not merely to remind us of the past, but to shame the present. And shame, in this case, is the healthiest thing the genre could feel. My only wish is that they would continue on their trajectory and keep humiliating cheap "gore" acts like Chris Barnes' Six Feet Under and completely transparent commercial clown shows like Arch Enemy. It is entirely, 100% deserved.
Finally, a band that knows how to play death metal the right way. All hail MORBID!
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