interview: Morgengrau

Looking for a death metal album with songs that you can remember after the music stops? You don’t have to go look much further than the Texas, U.S. band Morgengrau and its 2018 album Blood Oracle, the follow-up to the 2013 debut Extrinsic Pathway. Check out this exchange with Erika (guitars, vocals) and don’t forget the links at the end of this interview.

Hi, who is answering this interview? Can you shed some light on the band, the process of putting Blood Oracle together and personnel involved in the recording?

This is Erika Morgengrau. Thanks for the opportunity to chat. The band is myself on guitar and vocals, Nick Norris on guitar, Jake Holmes on bass. Kevin Elrod played session drums.

The recording was done a bit piecemeal, as many bands must these days, due to schedules, costs and personal preference. We captured drums at Noisefarm Studios out in Paige, TX with engineer Gilles De Laval at the helm. Great guy, funny, kept us focused and we had some excellent “cranky old metalhead” heart to hearts during the process. Guitars and bass were tracked at Killertone Studios in Dripping Springs, TX. Studio owner Jason Frankhouser is a master of tone, so for me there was no other choice. Vocals were captured at home, in a closet. I produced, and we enlisted Harris Johns to mix and master. He produced Pestilence’s “Consuming Impulse” and Immolation’s “Dawn of Possession.” Those are seminal albums with a seminal sound, the foundations of modern death metal. How could we not want that pedigree for our album? Sophomore albums are very hard - you have to surpass expectations set by the first, but with the inevitable shifts and improvements to style which come while growing as a band, second albums sometimes come off as lost and unfocused. We’d brought our A-game to writing and staying stylistically focused, so we chose A-game support to complete the effort, all the way down to bringing in Nick Keller to do the art. We’re very pleased with how it all came out.

Is Blood Oracle a concept story? Is there a lyrical connection between Blood Oracle and 2013’s Extrinsic Pathway? How much of the external world in 2018 is in the lyrics?

“Blood Oracle" is a concept album that springs off tales started with “Grave of Lies” and “Antithetical” from “Extrinsic Pathway.” There are themes of hopelessness, struggle and the pain of waiting all throughout the album. We’ve all faced dark moments in our lives, struggled with indecision, and bargained for better outcomes, sometimes at great cost to ourselves, when we look back on things in hindsight. My hope is listeners will sense echoes of their own experience in the songs and lyrics, and resonate with them. Albums we can make our own stay with us forever. It is completely free of any references to the outside world: politics, state of the metal scene, environment, et cetera.

For people not familiar with Morgengrau, would you mind explaining your views on Morgengrau music and also the vocals? How do you do vocals (effects, mic cupping, intelligibility, etc.)?

We play death metal because we love it. We wanted to contribute positively to the genre. I can’t emphasize enough that to understand what we’re about means you need to listen to our music. Find a dark room, eliminate distractions. Spend time with the album, get out the headphones, just let it pull you along. Look at the cover art as you listen. Lose yourself.

You’ll find the whole album is a complete thought. Too many bands stitch riffs together with little regard for dynamics and flow. Sure, you can write a lot of songs that way, but are you writing memorable songs that catch on after just a few listens? I like music that breathes, that takes you on a path somewhere. I threw out many more riffs than I ended up using. The order of the songs and their tempos was important; the album needed to flow through each song and into the next in a way that felt natural. That’s why it took five years to write and record.

I knew the vocals, which you’ve zeroed in on, would make or break the songs. They had to be well done, honest, and natural. No mike cupping, no pitch shifting, just a dab of reverb and delay. Clear diction is important - unintelligible lyrics are difficult to connect with. The low tones in “Wolves of Thirteen” and “Incipit Bellum” are throat singing. I wanted to capture the esoteric magic present on albums like “Altars of Madness” and Deicide’s self-titled debut. Listeners needed to feel the emotion and be swept away by it. From the amount of positive feedback we’ve received, I’d say we were quite successful.

Continuing the above question, how does your philosophy apply to the instrumentation (guitars, drums, so on and so forth)?

Traditional, all the way. Six string guitars, a BC Rich V with Dimarzio Super Distortions and a custom Jackson King V with stock humbuckers. Nothing special, not even a Tube Screamer in the chain. Everything was amped through a Marshall 4080 and Harris did the rest. When you have Mr. Killertone doing captures and Harris mixing and EQing, you don’t need a raft of pedals to make it sound good. We love the warm, balanced tone on the album. It sounds good on every type of system - headphones, car, regular stereo… it’s perfect.

The drums are all real. Sure, we tweaked a few late strikes here and there but that’s nothing unusual. Kevin busted his ass laying down those tracks. He’s a tremendous talent. To make the bass stand out, I rewrote a lot of the lines right before recording to counterpoint the guitars. Bass tone is quite clean, very little distortion. Too many bands use super distorted bass playing the same riff as the guitar - what you get then is three guitars just sawing away and making a big muddy river of sound. Not only is it uncreative but it shows a lack of understanding of good songwriting and sonic field.

Would you care to offer your definition of success for Morgengrau?

Success is having people enjoy the album. That’s all I want. This was never about financial return. There is none, not when you’re bringing in the pros to help with the production. The best you can hope for is to keep the financial hemorrhage slightly under control. The payoff is producing something great that didn’t exist before. All of the above goals have been achieved. Worth every penny. We’re very happy with the support and distribution we get through Unspeakable Axe; having Eric to help us with “Blood Oracle” was a huge advantage over the DIY approach we used with “Extrinsic.”

How exhausting was the process of making the album? What are your thoughts about making more albums?

As far as next albums, I’m not sure. The process was very long and took a lot out of me. I don’t know how I could follow it up with something other than a continuation of the concept. That’s a tall order. I won’t say never, but at the moment, I feel like I’ve said what I needed to say and I’d rather invest my resources in other non-music endeavors for the near future.

Erika, you play guitars and do vocals, and have done different genres of vocals and singing with other projects and bands. How do you do it? Are you active in those other entities and do traditional, melodic singing, too? And you have written a novel?! How do you find the time?

As alluded to above, Morgengrau is on the shelf, especially since we don’t have a drummer for live appearances. I’m fine with that. I’m over playing the songs live. I found playing them very stressful. Singing live is fine. I’ve always got a classic hard rock or heavy metal cover band in play. Keeps my voice fresh. Right now, it’s Virgin Killers, doing Scorpions. I’ve done Iron Maiden and Dio cover bands in the past. It’s fun, same group of guys basically, we’re like a family after jamming together for over 13 years now.

I toy with the idea of doing a traditional style project where I can use my clean voice. There’s a lot of things I can do which people have never heard. Here’s something I don’t believe I’ve ever mentioned in an interview - I can’t read music. AT ALL. I took 8 years of vocal training as a kid and, while I learned great technique and breath control, I just couldn’t sight read. It’s the strangest thing. To cover my deficiency, I learned to quickly to imitate the others in the choir so the teacher wouldn’t catch on. I believe that’s why I can sing in so many styles - I’m very good at imitating. I enjoy exploring the possibilities of voice. It’s a flexible and powerful tool, and no matter where you go, you have it with you to play with at any moment. It’s the perfect travel instrument.

In regards to time - yes, I like to be busy. My head is very noisy. I go through cycles - right now I’m in a “novel-writing, costume-making and cars” cycle. I have a bad tendency to start projects and not finish them. As I’ve aged, I’ve had to admit that focusing on a smaller number of things, doing them really well and finishing them is more important than having fifty little hobbies in play at a time. I’m always humming and listening to music, but writing songs isn’t very interesting to me right now.

How can fans of death metal give real, tangible support right now?

Get “Blood Oracle” in digital and CD from Unspeakable Axe’s Bandcamp. “Extrinsic” is available via the Morgengrau Bandcamp. Please buy a damn CD. I still have boxes and boxes! That’s it for merch - since we’re not playing live, shirts and patches are hard to move, so I’m holding on them. Depending on interest, we might do a vinyl later. Just buy a CD for now! Listen to the tunes, tell your friends if you like it, spread the word. Hail metal, hail death!

morgengrau.bandcamp.com/releases

unspeakableaxerecords.bandcamp.com/

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