Morgue Supplier - Mastering the Disease (2026)

Driven by inhuman, mechanical blasting rhythms that collapse and contrast against its more meandering, atmospheric grooves, Mastering the Disease seems a fit evolution for the previous Morgue Supplier record, Inevitability and its subsequent single tracks. But where its stylistic frame is comparable, there's something even harsher and more 'checked out' sounding about some of this newest material. A collision of death, grind, industrial vibes, even some noticeable progressive elements in the structuring, they really swing for the fences. I'd liken it to a sort of 'cybergrind', only you replace almost all of the futuristic (or at this point, retro futurist) synths and sound effects with loads of dissonant, death metal guitars more central to that genre, and a gruesome vocal exhibition which is actually quite detailed and technical as it's laid out.

A good example of the varied carnage this band can create of its listeners would be "Pupils of Insularity", starting off with a pensive flow, cleaner melodic guitars and thick bass, almost Godflesh-like vibes, which escalates into a head-spinning, dissonant bender that feels like you're testing a drum machine to hear how fast it will go before exploding; all the while the other instruments crash along with abandon and Paul Gillis wretches and sneers and vomits all over the riffing. This is not for the faint of heart, anyone wearing a pacemaker, or anyone retaining a warm view of humanity. Other dizzying tracks include the psychotic "Annihilated Thinker" with its broken beats that descend into strange sampling and drugged, dissonant riffs that ooze around the meat of the distorted bass-lines. "Next World Consumes" is a harrowing endscape soundscape, oppression thicker than concrete, but by the time you hear that you're probably already either dead or suffering a severe headache.

Thankfully, if you DO survive that, the closer is a brilliant dark ambient track, "Indifferent Majesty", which is one of my favorites on the album, even though it's completely different to everything before it. Spacious but intense, it shows the flip side of what these creators are thinking but from an entirely different, non-percussionist perspective. The cover art here also reminds me a lot of the post-modern cyberpunk/body horror film Tetsuo: the Iron Man by Shinya Tsukamoto, and it unquestionably might serve as a sort of aural counterpart to that visual experience. This is the future, here, ugly as fuck, and not what we were hoping. While not as brilliantly riffy as the band's eponymous 2016 album, my favorite, and a little less sublime than Inevitability, Mastering the Disease is still very intense, with just enough devil in the details, especially the myriad abusive vocals and provocative bi-polar shifts between blasting and grooves that litter its debris-ridden labyrinth of noise.

Verdict: Win [7.75/10]

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100075977500489

Morgue Supplier - A Life Extinguished (2023)

A Life Extinguished is the second in a series of singles planned for 2023 by Chicago sickos Morgue Supplier, and like its predecessor, its focus is on further fleshing out and exploring the band's influences from death and grind, with a fraction more atmosphere and progression than you'd have expected from their earlier full-lengths. There's a clear line here from Inevitability, but I found this particular track to be one of the most interesting they've produced yet, and although it's just as demented and extreme as you'd believe, there are points where it was almost weirdly accessible, with these bouncing grooves and catchier guitars taking over from the blasted, more intense exhibitions of force. It also goes hyper weird at points, shifting numerous times between tempos where the dissonant guitar lines ring out and they almost sound mischievous or playful...

It's probably an insane comparison, but what if there were a band which adopted the grindier aspects of bands like Exit 13 or Cephalic Carnage and then twisted them with a bit of Primus and an organically rendered dissonant brand of industrial metal circa Godflesh? That's what I took away from this tune, and it's highly entertaining, and a little different, without betraying the expectations of Morgue Supplier fans over the past few albums. As usual, Paul Gillis doesn't just deliver his vocals with monotonous grunts or snarls, the guy's got all that going on, but he just slathers his lines over the riffing, as if someone had spit them out in gobs and then they were running down the walls of the song's framework like blood or puke. Add to that an awesome bass tone from Stephen Reichelt, which excels whether it's plunking out fat notes that pop from the incendiary guitars, or with its rawer, blustering tone, and a frenzied, formidable drum spot from Danny Walker (Intronaut, Exhumed, Phobia, and many others). "A Life Extinguished" is every bit as heavy and frightening as its title implies, and lyrically evocative and grotesque, but it's also a hell of a lot of fun.

Verdict: Win [8.5/10]

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100075977500489

Morgue Supplier - Dead in Spirit (2023)

Coming off the frenetic Inevitability, Chicago's Morgue Supplier returns with something to further broaden its sound and scope, a track that balances off between a sense for melody and melancholy, and the spastic attacks the band has honed throughout 24 years of destruction. "Dead in Spirit" almost lulls you at first with its gently dissonant flow of chords, but Paul Gillis' savage slurries of rasped and guttural vocals, the ruptures of Stephen Reichelt's bass-lines and the crazy fills let one know that all is not right in paradise, and sure enough, the track swerves on and off the rails of sanity through fits of grinding intensity, tremolo picked death metal riffs and even further, spacy bouts with dissonance, even as a blanket that later covers the softer swerves. I'll mention again the effectiveness of the vocals and bass, the former sounding even more schizophrenic and gruesome over the calmer moments in the music, and the latter having a thick, hypnotic tone that would be fun to follow even if not for all the other band's weaponry firing off in tandem. There's quite a lot going on under the hood of this six-minute cut, perhaps more than what we're used to from many of the individual tracks off the full-lengths, and while I have no idea if there is more in this style coming, it's a good, singular excursion that keeps the palette of illness wet with some fresh ideas that fatten the band's sonic envelope.

Verdict: Win [8.25/10]

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100075977500489

Morgue Supplier - Inevitability (2022)

'If it ain't broke, don't fix it' is the popular expression, and had these Chicago deathgrind lunatics followed up their eponymous, excellent 2016 album with more of the same, I wouldn't have complained much. But Morgue Supplier LIKES to break it. They LIKE to shatter their style up against a concrete surface and then reorder the pieces, and thus Inevitability very quickly becomes their most fragmented, unhinged and challenging record to date, but one that doesn't leave its predecessors far behind in terms of stylistic foundation. If I described this to you as a hypothetical project in which members of Voivod and Godflesh teamed up to create a harrowing, grinding rival to Napalm Death, would you believe me? Because more than once in listening through this 38 minute frenzy of blasting and jerking, dissonant rhythms did such a comparison wrench itself into my brain.

Be ready. When you first spin this album you'll be presented with an immediate flurry of distorted bass and crazy tech grinding, almost enough to knock the wind out of you. I readily admit that when this band is going off the rails at full speed, it can become exhausting, but the real treat here is what lies in all the spaces between such spasms, where the material becomes more spacious, brooding and experimental, almost like the dissonant industrial apocalyptic landscapes that might surround the borders of what we see upon the late Marius Lewandowski's cover art. Loping, drudging Streetcleaner-grooves that split up the head-spinning violence, or airier guitar sections where the more open notes are allowed to ring out (as in the bridge of "Closing In") before they return to the tumultuous aggression. The drum programming is incredibly intense here, with all sorts of broken fills and patterns that feel like a claustrophobic puzzle you're trying to figure out, with each new track providing another painful peace. There are also these wild leads that erupt to keep you even further off-balance, and Stephen Reichelt's aforementioned buzzing bass-lines keep pace with the rest of the massacre.

The vocals of longstanding front man Paul Gillis are as sick as usual, trading primarily between a deep and resonant guttural and the impish snarling and rasping you might also recognize from his other projects Drug Honkey and Rabid Beast. It's a wild and hideous contrast that works very well against the razor-edged but scattered precision of the instrumentation, and you won't even get a chance to become bored of it as you'll constantly be questioning just what is this guy on!? Then, right near the center of the record you get hit with this instrumental, swelling, droning interlude which is just the perfect place to give your ears a rest while still feeling threatened. Some of Inevitability's best material actually comes through in the second half, "Existence Collapsed" with its wild riffing patterns, or the super clamorous and industrialized hell-scape that is "Thoughts of Only Darkness" which really hits that Godflesh/Treponem Pal feel but laced with the Voivod space-weirdness. The production is clear enough to convey the manic message of the death and grind aesthetics, but still malleable and raw.

Are there any chinks in the armor? Cracks in this already cracked mirror of an album? Not many. A few of the song structures feel a little overly random, spitting out idea after idea but sometimes forgetting to capitalize more on some of the better ones. And I think the more rapid-fire, spastic moments on the 2016 album hung around with me a bit longer, but Inevitability is a little more experimental, more deeply exploring other influences that weren't always as prominent before. Morgue Supplier is one of the better, more important grind or grind-adjacent bands out there because they don't rest on the dull laurels of the form...this isn't your garden variety collection of sped up four-chord hardcore rhythms, or a sample saturated gore-fetish platter; it's compulsive and cerebral and reminds us that this music can have a brain, even while it's hammering nails through yours. Put this alongside Poland's Antigama or some of the cooler, recent Napalm Death records as evidence that there's so much more to explore.

Verdict: Win [8/10]

https://morguesupplier.bandcamp.com/music

Morgue Supplier - Morgue Supplier (2016)

One of the reasons Morgue Supplier is one of the most exciting death/grindcore mutations to explode from the States in the 21st century is the sheer strength of the influences they bring. The acceleration and impact which so define the genre are present in spades, but where many comparable bands like fall a little flat is in the lack of ambition they weave into the songwriting. Sped up hardcore punk riffs I've heard a million times before just aren't going to cut it in 2015, and neither will sounding like a momentary testosterone spasm accompanied by vapid snarling and barking. Granted, this trend had started to shift in recent years with bands like Antigama and the late Gridlink expanding the field through more unique guitars and song structures, but these Chicago area psychopaths mete out a level of energy and disgust so furious and personal on their eponymous sophomore full-length that you feel as if you've actually been punished, something I've rarely attested to this niche since its late 80s birth.

If their name didn't give it away, Morgue Supplier lean more towards the 'death metal' side of that equation, upon a bedrock of Napalm Death-like blasting and chord grooves, only filtered through a more atonal, unusual note progressions, which at times reminds me of both the classic Voivod and perhaps even a little industrial filth redolent of an alt-universe hyperventilated Godflesh. There are all manner of individual riffs here which show roots in anything from tremolo picked OSDM to impious death/thrash to the whipping, dissonant frenzy of noisier American metalcore bands ala Converge or Dillinger Escape Plan, or the brickwork intensity of modern Cryptopsy; but they'll also lay into a death/doom groove or a more atmsopheric segue when it's best to let the audience take a chance to breathe. You get the feeling that absolutely nothing is off the table, provided that it's sick and feeds into this record's self-fulfilling paeans to murder, addiction and social disintegration; and to that extent the album is 14 tracks and 41 minutes of unforgiving hostility that will at the very least put you in stitches, if not a stretcher...which is kind of what the name implies. Polymaths of punishment, tirades of tempo shifting torture that never forgets the importance of having actual guitar riffs to reinforce the abuse.

Vocally Paul Gillis employs a number of attack schematics, from the sustained, grotesque guttural of a Martin van Drunen to the raspier snarls so often associated with this style. But what puts this over the top is the use of more robotic filters on several of the lines that just make it feel all the more angry and inhuman, dystopian and overwhelming. A bad battery acid trip. Mechanical malcontents. Rather than just rattling off syncopated, monotonous lyrical lines like sabers, there is an intense feeling of discomfort and personal pain captured in the ugliness of the expression. Teamed with the fat, pungent bass lines and a rich, bludgeoning guitar tone that measures off both the fury of the chords and the street light shine of the higher pitched, natural dissonance of the strings, there is just so much pressure being applied at almost any point on the album that you feel strangulated, but right when you're about to lose consciousness they'll switch to something a little simpler and let the senses of vertigo and suffocation subside. Anchored by some muscular drumming which coordinates simpler grooves effortlessly into extreme blasting and bass-rolling overdrive, this band sounds insanely driven, and sort of how Napalm Death's latest Apex Predator - Easy Meat kicked off 2015 with its death grinding excellence, Morgue Supplier has set an early benchmark for aggression in the new year. I'd warn you to wear a helmet, but all it would really do is keep the contents of your head contained once they explode.

Verdict: Epic Win [9/10]

https://www.facebook.com/morguesupplier?fref=ts

Morgue Supplier - Bringer of the End (Executioner Theme) (2013)

Executioner looks to be another of those ultra violent comedy 'toons in the vein of Metalocalypse, Superjail!, and the ill-fated Korgoth of Barbaria (which I really wish had gotten a full run beyond the pilot). With comedian Brian Posehn voicing the lead character in the gravelly, menacing tone you might expect, it definitely looks to prove entertaining for the cross-section of cartoon fans, extreme music junkies and stoners generally attracted to similar series, of which I probably must include myself, being a hardcore follower/DVD collector of Space Ghost Coast to Coast, Sealab 2021, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, and the Venture Bros. But what's really sweet about Executioner is that, being a slightly more underground production than those I've named, they've also gone with an underground band for the OP theme, specifically Morgue Supplier out of Chicago, who you might recall from their great 2009 EP Constant Negative.

I've watched the brief clip I was given of the song playing alongside the animation, and then listened to the track on its own a number of times, and I have to admit it's consistent in quality with the earlier material I've heard. Spastic, jerking death metal with parallels to grind and dissonant, mathematical metalcore (Burnt by the Sun, Coalesce, etc.) Dense, chugging chords are alternated with bursts of blasted intensity, while the chord progressions always have a highly textured, fulsome quality about them. Vocalist Paul Gillis uses a brute and primal death metal inflection redolent of Martin van Drunen, only with some extended growls and the accompaniment of venomous rasps as added viscera. The bass tone is swarthy, distorted and thick enough that, in combination with the shifting rhythm guitars, create a corpulent atmosphere unto themselves, which doesn't exactly require melody or lead guitar spurts to round it off, especially within the confines of the brief track length (about 2:40). Drums remain tight when varied through the blasted outbreaks and the loping, massive grooves, and in conjunction with the fat rhythm guitar chugging it's all quite forceful.

It's a digital single, released through Itunes and other sites, and unlikely to appear in its full incarnation once the episodes begin airing on YouTube soon through Rug Burn cartoons (who are also putting out animated clips of the Axe Cop comic). However, as a teaser for a hinted new Morgue Supplier full-length, this is certainly something to be excited over. It fits in seamlessly as a transition from the earlier material, and deals with a balance of older and contemporary influences that you don't hear all too often of late. I can't promise that this particular track is painfully memorable, but its abusive and concussive enough for fans of death and grind hybrids which think outside the box without seeming trendy or insincere (see also Flourishing). Well worth a listen, and hopefully the cartoon itself will not prove a hack job, and live up to the brutality..."Bringer of the End" ensures that Posehn and the animators have their work cut out for them...but enough of my bad puns, check out the tune.

Verdict: Win [7.5/10]

https://www.facebook.com/morguesupplier?fref=ts
http://www.youtube.com/user/Rugburn

Morgue Supplier - Constant Negative EP (2009)

Normally I am not one to go out for much grindcore, as the scene is controlled by a bunch of tight wadded, spastic scenester kids making awful political statements or channeling their A.D.D. into the craziest patterns their hands and feet and vocal chords can spew. I am far more the type who likes his grind sauteed in well written death metal and a complete lack of pretentious posturing. Morgue Supplier, out of Chicago, offer a solution that everyone can be satisfied with, and Constant Negative is an excellent shell for the terrifying payload potential. Morgue Supplier is a HEAVY fucking band, the kind of heavy that is used to demolish concrete structures, foreign armies and the dreams of the innocent. They provide a bleak indoctrination into the hopelessness of living, the perversity and addiction which still corrode the margins of our civilization despite the wasted attempts of public service announcements and too often hypocritical good will.

That all of this is delivered in just over 21 minutes (less, if you discount the Metallica cover) is a testament to the band's talent at writing impulses of carefully constructed chaos. Morgue Supplier are a dynamic band, that is, they will not simply blast and grind through you; they actually write songs, which range from the staggering and unforgiving speed of other deathgrind acts to slower, doom laden passages which recall a fantasy jam session between Godflesh and Pestilence in 1989. Vocalist Paul Gillis sounds like a bulldog who was experimented upon, given sentience, then escaped from his captors and tormentors in a lab fire, and is now out to seek revenge...okay...not one mutant bulldog, but a pack of them. He snarls and growls in tandem, creating a percussive ruckuss that adds momentum to the rhythm sections which feel like getting slammed in the jaw repeatedly by a steel girder swinging from a crane.

"Constant Negative" itself is the grand christening to this timely little juggernaut, and it swells with almost Gorguts-level mathematical oddness that breaks into some of the slower passages (I mentioned before). "Slave" will just fucking kill you, a grinding thrasher hyped up on every drug imaginable. But thank to the excellent production here, you can taste every little meathook rhythm as it hooks a slab for the freezer. The riffs after :30 actually become intensely hypnotic before they transform into an all out battery which places your brain and audio inputs at the brink of collapse. "Forgive Nothing" is the sound of those aforementioned bulldogs tearing up the flesh of anyone in their path, grinding vomit holocaust with spasms of winding thrash death punch. "Mother of Dog" is one of the longer originals on the EP, and the slowdown after 1:00 is one of the most atmospheric, incredible segments of the material...like the drug addled stupor of one too many early AM rushes to the emergency ward.

Life my pledge not will I
know not do I which that to
deaf are ears my blind are eyes my
God call you that bullshit this to
yourself question you do

Indeed! "Degenerate" is another turbulent piece with some tight, spastic hooks that resound like a pedophiliac's laughter as he's handed his pink slip from the local prison. After this, we are treated with Morgue Supplier's rendition of "Fight Fire With Fire", and while I would have gladly traded it for another original track, at least the band makes it their own (after the acoustics, of course). The vocals actually sound good over it, and the blasted bridge riff is pretty hot. The EP closes with two re-recordings of tracks from the band's 2004 Sociopath album. "Convulsive Reoccurence" features some of the most slamming breaks on the EP, busily grooving beneath the destructive arc of Gillis' throat, and has another of those incredible slow rhythms, vibrating beneath some architectural speed picking. "Open Sore Abuse" is laden with Eric Bauer's shifting drum work and some insane rise & fall rhythms, like the final cleaving of skull from neck as the bonesaw drives on down to the autopsy table.

Morgue Supplier is pretty fucked, in all the right ways, but you never once feel as if they lose control over what they are creating (like so many of those subpar spastic bands created to impress the brainy chic that always hangs around the local tattoo parlor). The lyrics are deceptively simple...delivering chaos through a stream of angered thoughts that accumulate from the far corners of the mind. This is no bad acid trip, it's more like a bad night of 'mix and match whatever chemicals you have in your cupboard'. It's like drinking antifreeze and being rushed off to the clinic...your whole life flashes before your eyes, or at least someone's life.

Complaints? Not really...I could have lived without the Metallica cover, but it's not bad. If you like death metal, you will probably like this. If you like grindcore, you will probably like this. Ghettocore? Sure. 'Math' metal? Why not. Constant Negative supplies so many corpses that they're stacked up in the back alley BEHIND the morgue. It will be great to hear the band's next full-length, especially if it can retain the quality of what this EP contains. Of course, I'm not sure the Prairie State can carry such a burden without exploding, but if Morgue Supplier wipes it off the map, all the better!

Highlights: Slave, Mother of Dog, Convulsive Reoccurence, Open Sore Abuse

Verdict: Win [8.5/10] (judgement is for the flock)

http://www.myspace.com/morguesupplier