Morbid - Year of the Goat (2011)

Since the bands formation and demise in the late 80's, Morbid has been recognized as one of the most influential and cult bands to emerge from Sweden's early black/death metal scene. Lead by Per "Dead" Yngve Ohlin, Morbid cut the, 'December Moon' demo in 1987, which helped spark the initial flame within the Swedish underground scene, although Dead quickly departed in '88 and moved to Norway to join Mayhem and ultimately he killed himself in early '91, which more or less increased his cult status to legendary levels. Since those early days tons of bootlegs have been released, which contain the demo as well as various live and rehearsal tracks, however, 'Year of the Goat' is the first official re-release of this material.

Year of the Goat comes housed in a DVD sized slip case box that contains a digibook filled with tons of photos of Dead and Morbid as well as a thorough write up on the bands history, an interview with Slayer Magazine, lyrics and gig information plus, of course, two discs worth of Morbid treasures.

The first disc kicks off with the December Moon demo, which for its time was a highly influential release both in sound, lyrics and visual appeal. Along with other early cult bands of the time, such as, Mayhem, Sarcofago and Bathory, Morbid pretty much set the standard for what black metal would ultimately sound and look like. However since it is just a demo its sloppy, raw and amateurish in its overall execution, yet its just that youthful aggression and early extreme metal sound that makes the whole thing so appealing. Completely remastered here the December Moon demo has never sounded better and for a lot of us this will be our first time to actually own a Morbid release, especially since yours truly was never very keen on paying top dollar for bullshit bootlegs, but I can say when I first heard the demo through Napster years ago the temptation was surely there.

It's a bit hard to describe the demo, but I think a fair way to put it into perspective is if you took equal parts of the first three Bathory albums and mixed them with Teutonic thrashers like Kreator and Sodom as well as Morbid's own pioneering black/death metal characteristics you'll essentially have December Moon. Dead is also well noted for being one of the first individuals to take the stage in corpsepaint and his lyrics (aside from Disgusting Semla) are right on par with what the Norwegians would be cranking out a few years later. Six rehearsal tracks also grace the first disc and while they are a bit more under produced they as well have been remastered and somehow sound dynamic in their delivery. Some of these, 'Deathexecution' & 'Ciththrasher' were never professionally recorded, which is a shame, but they were regularly played live.

During Morbid's brief existence less than ten gigs were played and almost all of them were at youth centers in front of less than 100 people who may or may not have even been metal heads. Disc two contains songs from three separate gigs and as you'd probably guess the songs vary greatly in sound quality and musician performance, but again the whole youthful aggression factor really just takes over here and for a little over and hour I'm once again wishing I could have been a teen living in Stockholm back in the 80's. Its also fun hearing Dead speak to the crowd in-between songs as well as hearing the audiences reception to his words and the bands music. Also I'm quite sure Dead took the evil ideas behind Morbid very seriously, but when I listen to these songs it just sounds like a bunch of kids having a good time, which is great, but its just unfortunate to think how grim things would soon get for this youngster.

Going back to the layout its quite interesting reading the booklet since it reveals a lot of facts about the band that I never knew about, such as the planed reunion in '89 as well as the 7" LP that was to be recorded and Dead's desire to move back to Sweden and attend art school, but ultimately all of that fell through due to his growing depressing in Norway.

In the end its unfortunate that the reunion never happened, because it really would have been interesting to see the band record that 7" or a full-length album. Of course the remaining members went onto bands like Nihilist/Entombed, Murder Squad and The Sun so the talent was obviously there, and had these guys not split up the Swedish scene may very well have turned out completely different. Morbid played before genre terms like Death Metal or Black Metal even existed and as such the band never got much recognition during their short time together, but at least now we finally have these old treasures to enjoy and to remember a time now long gone.