Morgoth (band)
| Morgoth | |
|---|---|
 Morgoth at Wacken Open Air 2011 |
|
| General information | |
| Genre (s) | Death metal |
| founding | 1985, 2011 |
| resolution | 1998 |
| Current occupation | |
singing |
Karsten Jäger |
| Sebastian Swart | |
guitar |
Harry Busse |
| Sotirios Kelekidis | |
| Marc Reign | |
| former members | |
| Carsten Otterbach († 2018) | |
| Rüdiger Hennecke | |
| Marc Grewe (until 2014) | |
Morgoth is a death metal band from Meschede . Besides Atrocity, the band was the only German death metal band that was able to attract international attention in the 1990s. The band name comes from the universe of JRR Tolkien , in which Morgoth embodies evil.
Band history
The band was founded in 1985 under the name Exterminator, then it was renamed to Minas Morgul (also from Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings ) and shortly afterwards to Morgoth. After a demo , the band got a contract with Century Media . There they released two EPs before the debut album Cursed was released in 1991 . With their simple but effective Death Metal, the band soon achieved international success. In 1990 the band toured Europe with Obituary as co-headliners and Demolition Hammer . Following the tour, Sebastian Swart - previously guitarist with Dark Millennium - joined the cast and took over the bass part from Marc Grewe, who from then on concentrated exclusively on the vocals.
In 1993 the second album Odium was released. The band had incorporated modern elements into this album and went musically more demanding paths, but many fans could not understand this development.
The album Feel Sorry for the Fanatic (1996) moved even further away from the Death Metal of earlier days. The songs were structurally more rock, at a more moderate pace than most of the earlier works, but no less aggressive. Rather, the band developed a new form of heaviness with partly industrial-like, partly spherical sound elements (e.g. flanger ) and thus created a gloomy end-time mood. There are stylistic similarities to the 1995 album X-territorial by Power of Expression , which is not surprising, because Marc Grewe was also active as a singer in this band. The album was not well received by many fans, and sales also fell short of expectations. Some critics, however, consider Feel Sorry for the Fanatic to be Morgoth's most mature, independent, and demanding work. The band broke up in 1998.
Singer Marc Grewe was also active as a guest singer with the Swedish band Comecon. He and Sebastian Swart founded the band Action Jackson with a few other musicians, which was active until 2005. Marc Grewe then sang in the Berlin band Suicide by Cop, which he founded with the Action Jackson bassist Thilo Mellies and Mark “Schrod” Schröder (Infront / Anticops / Postmortem - now Protection of Hate) after their breakup. Meanwhile Grewe sings with the band Insidious Disease. Other members are Sven Atle Kopperud (alias Silenoz), Jon Øyvind Andersen (alias Jardar), Shane Embury and Tony Laureano.
In December 2010, Morgoth announced some festival shows for the following year to mark the 20th anniversary of the Cursed release. With the line-up Marc Grewe (vocals), Harry Busse (guitar), Sebastian Swart (guitar), Sotirios Kelekidis (bass, Sinew, ex-Force Trankill) and Marc Reign (drums, ex- Destruction ), the band then re-formed performed at the Rock Hard Festival and the Wacken Open Air in 2011 . The band spoke of a comeback and played more concerts in 2012. As part of the anniversary tour, the show was recorded at the Way of Darkness festival in October 2011 in Lichtenfels and was released on June 22, 2012 as a DVD and live album under the title Cursed to Live .
In October 2012 the band announced that after their last appearance in December 2012 they wanted to take a break for an indefinite period of time. A reunion was never originally planned, just an anniversary tour at selected festivals. At the same time, the band did not rule out isolated activities for 2013.
In 2014 the band supported the British death metal band Bolt Thrower on their European tour and a new studio album is in the works for spring 2015. Singer Marc Grewe left the band at the end of 2014 and was replaced by Karsten Jäger ( Disbelief ).
On March 30th, 2015 they released a new album called Ungod , at the same time the official band biography was published under the title "Morgoth Uncursed - The Morgoth Chronicles" in the Red Dragon edition. Written down does this on behalf of the band and the publisher of a PhD historian Christian Krumm .
Discography
- 1988: Pits of Utumno (Demo)
- 1989: Resurrection Absurd (EP)
- 1990: The Eternal Fall (EP)
- 1991: Cursed
- 1993: Odium
- 1996: Feel Sorry for the Fanatic
- 2005: 1987–1997: The Best of Morgoth (Best-of-Album)
- 2012: Cursed to Live (Live album and DVD)
- 2014: God Is Evil (single)
- 2015: Ungod
Individual evidence
- ↑ Visions Underground Blog, interview from July 16, 2011
- ↑ a b Kai Leichtlein: Morgoth: Artwork and album details for UNGOD. New album in March. Metal Hammer , January 30, 2015, accessed January 30, 2015 .
