I’m not sure I could fathom the level of creative output guitarist and bassist Phil “Land Phil” Hall has accomplished the past decade. With Municipal Waste, Iron Reagan, and Cannabis Corpse, the stringed savant has conquered thrash, crossover, and death metal and pleased many metalheads ears. But there was one itch left for him to scratch—scratch that—two itches left for Land Phil: black metal and animation. Finding a way to take care of both in one epic fell swoop, he launched a new black metal project: Morbikon. Ov Mournful Twilight, out October 28 via Tankcrimes, is a gleeful ode to the more symphonic aspects of the classic second wave sound, channeling Emperor, Immortal, and Dissection to wonderful effect.
Everything Land Phil does, he imbues it with a life and vitality to it, a clear homage to the greats of yesteryear by channeling how they have made him feel. If you’ve ever been transported to a frosty forest by tremolo riffs and raspy vocals, Morbikon are a gift to you. Interestingly, the seeds of the band came from a childhood present.
“When I first started getting into extreme music, and in general, I had friends growing up that were in their own black metal band. I was a young kid and in middle school at the time and these kids were older and in high school, so they seemed pretty cool to me. They were super into Emperor and Immortal. I definitely had an education of black metal hand-in-hand with my education of death metal because they were equally into death metal as well. So I remember getting a tape made for me that had Morbid Angel’s Formulas Fatal to the Flesh on one side, and then it had Emperor’s IX Equilibrium on the other side.”
“So that tape,” he continues, “this was before the internet was a major presence in my life, and I couldn’t afford to go out and buy every record that I wanted because I was a little kid, of course. This tape had a huge effect on the formulation of my musicality. It showed me that you could be brutal, and you could also combine all sorts of other elements because Emperor at that time was doing tons of stuff on their records. So I just thought that making extreme music could be done any way you wanted to really. But also having the influences and stuff sticking to the sound that you’re going for is important to me as well. Because sometimes if you borrow too much from too many different genres, it becomes not enough for anyone that likes any other genres.
When I pick a black metal band, I want to stick to that sound and recreate the vibe and the feeling that it gave me when I was first listening to it as a kid on my Walkman. And so as long as the riff has that sort of energy to it, I don’t know, I can just sense it. I tried a lot of different risks, and I tried a lot of different things with this music, and I had a lot of time to work on it. I made sure that everything kind of made me feel that sort of energy or that feeling.”
When did that teenage feeling translate into the seeds of Morbikon? What was the official genesis of the project? Interestingly, an older friend brought it to life.
“I found myself with some extra time in 2020, and Municipal Waste had already completed the Electrified Brain album, so I just had a desire to sort of create songs that were six minutes-plus and just go crazy with all the things that sort of can’t be done in my other projects. There’s no limit; there’s no rules to music, but there are certain things that I couldn’t do in these other bands. I just fully explored those atmospheres. Also, getting (Municipal Waste’s) Dave Witte involved really invigorated me and got me excited about it because he’s such an excellent drummer.
“And once we started rehearsing the songs, his influence on the songs and his energy and just how tumbling his rhythm is really breathes life into these songs. When I’m writing, I’m using click track on Pro Tools to sort compose the songs and maybe come up with ideas, and that’s one thing. But once you hear the songs just being performed organically with a very skilled drummer like Dave Witte, it can really just light the fire and get you excited about how things are turning out with it.”
When we talk about feel, there is a very wobbly tightrope to walk to concoct the best black metal, as Land Phil notes.
“Well, the tricky part with black metal, of course, you’re using these minor keys and these melodies, so there’s a fine line between being evil and going into way too cheesy territory with these sort of melodic scales and stuff. Trying to find the perfect balance of having that sort of thing and not going overboard with it. Also just injecting as much brutality into the music, and that way it offsets the melodic stuff. I I went real heavy on the melodic part, I would try to generally follow it up with some really brutal, intense parts, so the listener doesn’t have too much of either thing, and it usually works out that way. I heard Lars Ulrich talk about how he always thought that, in order for a fast part to sound fast, you had to put it next to a slow part. And it sounds so simple in theory, but sometimes when you’re actively writing, you can forget certain rules like that.”
The second itch for him to scratch was a long love of animation, and animation and black metal go hand in hand, maybe more so than matches and European churches.
“If I’m trying to have a continuous story run throughout all these cartoons, says Hall, “the goal would really be I have to have a video for every song, but it’s extremely time-consuming and with touring, with (Municipal) Waste picking back up, it’s become harder and harder to find time to really buckle down and work on it for weeks on end. I was able to for the first one, but I’m still working on it every time I find some time. I have a huge chunk done of the second video, and I’m hoping to have it done by the end of the year or so. It definitely continues the story, and I have sort of a rough draft of how I imagine the entire story going for this record. If I’m able to achieve it, I’ll be very happy. It might take years, but I would love to keep it going with it and because it would just be such an epic thing.
“As far as the themes,” he adds, “there’s definitely sort of a classic sort of medieval horror thing that goes hand in hand with certain black metal imagery. It felt good what I was doing. And as time went on, I had certain ideas of plot points and storylines, and I thought maybe that is a little bit humorous. But the vibe is, I’m just trying to have a cool dark and evil cartoon, and maybe these moments of levity will help the moments of horror poke out. Just having every sort of emotion experienced is usually a good thing in entertainment. There’s definitely a lot of horror, great horror that has certain humorous elements, but it’s definitely not a focal point of music or the lyrics or anything. It’s just something that sort of happened organically while I was creating this cartoon.”
The last friend Land Phil needed was one he didn’t have yet. While he’s done vocals in other projects, eventually Finntroll and …And Oceans vocalist Mathias “Vreth” Lillmåns came aboard, thanks to… hot sauce?
“I definitely attempted doing lead vocals in this project,” Hall explains. “But I don’t know, sometimes I just would love to hear someone else’s voice on a track. Running into Vreth was perfect. I must confess, I hadn’t met him before this project. I sort of randomly reached out to him at the time Finntroll had just dropped their cartoon. I was working on my cartoon, and I saw that, and I thought how similar in the vocal composition it was to what I was working on.
“I reached out to him, and he got right back to me, sent me a picture of the Municipal Waste hot sauce that he had, so we just struck up a conversation, and he was able to put his vocals on the tracks. We sort of provided him with the compositions, and he sort of did what we had written, but he also provided certain ideas, and some of his ideas came through on the tracks. It was great working with him.”
Friends, fiery black metal, and medieval horror: Morbikon have it all!
Photo courtesy of Marc Birr
