Defying death with DECEASED’s Children of the Morgue
By Scott “Stayin’ Alive” Belzer | November 26th, 2024
Concept albums are nothing new to music. Focusing on a single theme can be fun, and writing music based around a single idea or narrative allows an artist to flex some creative skill. Audiences tend to love it, especially when it’s interesting and cohesive. Coheed and Cambria built an entire career out of it. Music is as old as storytelling itself, after all, with certain folks choosing aural textures over raw spoken word.
But when does that focus transcend concept and become a meditation? Can it transform from a mere theme into a philosophical rumination? Can a concept album evolve into something more?
I sure as hell don’t know, but DECEASED’s 2024 release, Children of the Morgue, seems to have come close. The Hell’s Headbangers LP offers a whopping 55 minutes’ worth of void gazin’, tomb stompin’ and grave diggin’ tunes that delve deep into the topic of shedding the mortal coil, with the end product exploring every avenue of the death metal genre and standing as a true testament of what it means to be a death metal band.
The album’s instrumental first track, “Destination: Morgue” acts as a town crier announcement. It’s a master storyteller screaming “Hear ye, hear ye,” by way of guitar, inviting an audience to gather ‘round for another epic yarn. It fades into the album’s title track, which ups the BPM and outlines the band’s mission statement: no matter how much we struggle, suffer, spend, study or satisfy—the cold hand of time ultimately squeezes us all, a cycle that repeats (and will repeat) for all time.
Children, all children, our children
With life there is no reward
Children, all children, death’s children
The children of the morgue
It ain’t called life metal, folks.
The rest of the album takes this same premise lyrically, but from different vantage points. “Terrornaut,” “The Reaper’s Nesting,” “Brooding Lament,” and “The Grave Digger,” explore the consciousness or acknowledgement of death in the immediate sense, whereas “Eerie Wavelengths, “Fed to Mother Earth,” and “Farewell (Taken to Forever)” get more philosophical with the subject. These songs tackle such heavy subject matter as religion, suicide, decay, nihilism and acceptance.
DECEASED set themselves apart from their heavyweight contemporaries—Autopsy, Possessed, Death, The Chasm and (dare I say) Slayer—with empowering orchestration and layered melodies. Vocalist King Fowley, while dealing with some morose subject matter, has such commanding tone that you’d think he’s death itself rather than just another victim. Soaring tones and riffs from both Mike Smith and Shane Fuegal are quicker to hasten your pulse than deaden it, while rhythms from Les Snyder and Amos Rifkin only slow down to emphasize. Solos from guests like Mark Adams, Matt Ibach and Mike Bossier make for a cavalcade of electric mayhem. You aren’t ready to accept or lament death when listening to DECEASED, you’re ready to confront it head on.
The band isn’t afraid to take their time in flexing songwriting skills, either. Only two of Children of the Morgue’s songs dip below the five-minute mark, with the majority hanging around seven or eight minutes. The tradeoff? Masters of the genre showing what 40 years’ worth of experience can perform: songs with straight up movements, measures, experimentation and builds, man—so many epic builds.
But going back to the original question. As bards that have delved deeply into the subject matter for nearly four decades—willfully staring into the abyss on countless full length releases, EPs and singles—DECEASED offer a mixture of wisdom and warning on Children of the Morgue. Regarding death, you can continue searching for the answers—lord knows they have—but always arrive at the same answer: the void awaits us all no matter how rich, poor, learned or pious we become.
Take it from the storytellers, the meditators, the ruminators, the philosophers, the ambassadors that death metal musicians ultimately become: The more years we see, the more we come to realize how inevitable death is, making life all the more precious by comparison; become a master of your own life and you will at least learn to accept the reaper that lurks behind us all.
Children of the Morgue’s closer reprises its mission statement, acting as a conclusion to the album’s near-hourlong meditation, drowned in a sea of bluesy riffs:
Children, children, children of the morgue…the subject, the creature, the spawn
Children, children, children of the morgue…soon you will know the beyond
Children, all children, our children…one day the world will just stop
Children, all children, death’s children…with life we’ll finally know death
Deceased are set to decimate Boggs Social & Supply on December 12 with Desolus and Sadistic Ritual. Buy tickets now!