Guitarist/Vocalist Paul Gillis has been at it in the scene for thirty years, and when Morgue Supplier got going, he was a man with a plan. Create brutal death metal that will rip heads off from here to the end of the world.
Mastering the Disease is the band’s fourth album, and Stephen Reichelt once again joins in on bass guitar. We also get guest vocals from James Lee (Face of Oblivion/Pathology) on the song “Blood Prints” and Danny Lawson (Usurper) for “Pupils of Insularity”. The band was looking for a drummer who could capture Paul’s latest and greatest vision, and for this album, enter none other than Marco Pitruzzella (Six Feet Under, Anomalous, Sleep Terror, ex-Vile, ex-The Faceless, ex-Brain Drill). Marco had a good ‘ole rock n rolling fun time recording the newest Six Feet Under. Now was he able to let loose like his gravity blasting bad ass self-did with Brain Drill? No. Did Paul unleash the beast that is Marco, on this latest album? You bet your ass he did!
“Swelling Revulsion” starts things off with a little feedback, then with some maniacal start and stop drumming and Paul screaming his head off. All nice and fun until the 34-second moment. Gravity blasts, gravity blasts, gravity blasts. I will go on record as saying these are the fastest gravities I have ever heard. Faster than Brain Drill. Faster than Origin and faster than Rings of Saturn. Out of control. I was just mentioning to Paul recently that gravity blasts have gone away, and I was happy to hear them return. I just was not prepared for this onslaught. Towards the end of the song, it’s nice to hear some bass guitar strumming, which is heard throughout the release.
The title track is next. Beginning soft and quiet until the maniacal drumming returns. Fast, Faster, Fastest, than onto inhuman capabilities. More of the isolated drumming around the 1.15 mark, where it’s a fast double pounding method, is mixed in perfectly as the guitars take a back seat. Ferocious. The song slows down, and bass guitar plucking is ever-present, as the guitars take on a dissonance, not unlike that of Ulcerate. Paul has played around with dissonance before, with elements containing some later era Brutal Truth with discordant riffage and noises. The slow moments take on an almost drone-like, doomy sound. The speed returns with some weird-ass guitar soloing with terrific alternating vocals. The gravity blasting returns, and even I get tired from all the air drumming I am doing during the speedy parts.
“The Gnashing of False Teeth” has a damn good bass guitar intro and this moment resembles Godflesh. Yeah, Paul, I picked that out fast. Paul is a huge Godlfesh fan, like me. Think of Godflesh doing their doomy, depressive, discordant moments. That is what we have going on here. This is a good breather and you can feel Marco is like, Paul, come on bruh, let me loose again. The doomy drone effect erupts into a gravity blast around the 2.25 section and I swear they are even faster than the previous gravities and they go on for quite some time. Some ethereal, behind-the-scenes types of screaming than growls coming in. The abrupt speed of so slow to ungodly lightning speed, is so much fun!
“Depersonalized Realization” gets into some double pounding speed early on and varying degrees of vocalizations. The slow doomy dissonance is ever present and there are a lot of nods to Carbonized on this album. Just weird spastic blasting, weird noises, non-linear chords being strummed. This song is another example of the weirdness that is inside Gillis’ musical brain. The album, as a whole, is akin to watching the weird ass movie and one of my faves, Being John Malkovitch.
Mastering the Disease is an inhumanely creative and experimental journey into grind, doom, industrial, death metal and technical death metal. Morgue Supplier is not an easy band to just headbang to. It’s like thinking man’s metal. Paul pushes the boundaries and definitely getting Marco has been a huge advantage in this album. There are a few production, mastering issues. Songs will end with several seconds of silence before a song begins or a song will take several seconds to begin, when it’s just silence.
The production is good, however, there is no real bottom end, therefore this is very trebly sounding. The album cover is most excellent and goes wonderfully with this over-the-top sounding album. Because I listen to a lot of weird shit I really dig this album. I commend Paul for pushing the boundaries of extreme metal and also experimenting even more on his craft. This album will force you to consider, what is extreme? Utterly monstrous!!
