Welcome to Demo:listen, your weekly peek into the future of underground metal. Whether it’s death, grind, black, doom, sludge, heavy, progressive, stoner, retro, post-, etc. we’re here to bring you the latest demos from the newest bands. On this week’s Demo:listen, we sink down through pitchy leagues of creosote and dredge ourselves back up by the bootstraps to bring unto you the sounds of Germany’s Morast.
Like something left in the backyard by an early spring gale, full of mystery and foreboding, Morast’s demo appeared out of nowhere . . . only to just lie there. Perfectly content to wallow in its sovereign weirdness until its eventual, slow to mid-paced death. Without shredding your face off, or shooting you full of blast beats, or dooming you to death, or hacking you apart limb by limb with an old school guitar tone, Morast just sit there; like a Schopenhauer quote waiting patiently for you to come upon it so that it may quietly, but quite irrevocably deconstruct your sense of being.
After catching wind of this dismal beast, we reached out to Morast so as to better understand their demo and received laconic responses from J., their guitarist. He explains that the “intention was to create a bleak, cold and dark vibe.”
When pressed about Morast’s influences, J. was hesitant to speak for the whole band, especially because they “don’t want to sound like any other band.” But he did admit to being personally influenced by the likes of Winter, Triptykon and Neurosis. “But,” he says, “the gloom of life, wrath, disillusion and negativity are much more important for [Morast’s] vibe and musical approach.
Recorded then self-released in 2015, Morast’s self-titled demo recently achieved kvlt status when it was reissued on cassette by Totenmusick. Who cares if going from self-titled released CD to label-backed cassette is a little backwards? Morast don’t do anything like you’d expect them to. And while nothing is certain, Morast seem more than capable of releasing a monstrous full length or two. So it’s only a matter of time before we’ll be telling people the demo’s better.
You heard it here at Demo:listen. Check back next and every Friday for promising new metal.
