Morstice

Formed in 1992 in the backwoods of County Durham by three likeminded death metal fans Chris Newby,Steve Gillham and Wallis Hodgson. The band started writing songs in Chris's bedroom before starting to rehearse in the local village hall where they started to write their first songs as a 3 piece at this point there was no bassist or 2nd guitarist.The band wrote a few songs with this line up before they were joined by two other likeminded local death metallers Garry Barker and Shaun Broughton.
With this line up the band located to a proper rehearsal studio where they completed a few more songs which were to feature on the bands debut demo "As My Suffering Grows" which was recorded in the spring of 1993,the band played thier first gig in Durham City in March of 1993 where they got a great response from the local crowd. This demo was a brutal slab of downtunded death metal with some morbid doom passages.The tracklist for this demo was "As My Suffering Grows " , "Apparitions","Shrouded in misery","In Memoriam to the Dead","Graven Images" and "Morbid Ceremonies".
They released this demo soon after and got extremely positive feedback and responses from the worldwide underground death metal/tape trading scene.This demo was one of the first death metal demos to be reviewed in Terrorizer magazine.the band continued to play shows and write more new material and in November of 1993 they entered Uncle Sam's studio in Newcastle where they recorded the follow up to the first demo "Reflections Remain" which showed how much the band had progressed and matured in just the space of half a year with a more sharper less downtuned sound and with the addition of swedish style melodic harmonies/melodies which was unheard of for a UK death metal band to do at that point in time as most other UK death metal bands were trying to just be as brutal as possible.
Morstice's 2nd demo combined brutality with technical prowess and sharp razor edge like Swedish style harmonies (early At the Gates,Eucharist, early Dissection etc...)and raised the bar for all otherUK underground death metal bands.The tracklist for this demo was "Dormancy of Dreams","Reflections Remain","Licentious Congress" and "Your Beautiful Corpse"(Shaun vocalist of uk underground death veterans Malediction contributed backing vocals to this recording). This demo also recieved an excellent response from the worldwide death metal scene and the band got rave reviews in the underground fanzine network.The band also recorded two promo videos for this demo which were released some time later. In early 1994 attracted the attention of Deaf/Peaceville records who were so impressed with this demo that they expressed an interest in signing the band but sadly nothing materialised.
At this point in time the band had recieved rave reviews and interviews from all the major UK underground fanzines/magazines aswell as countless worldwide underground publications and were being hailed by some as the best underground death metal band in the UK at that time. The band played more shows throughout 1994 with the likes of Solstice,Chorus of Ruin and local friends/underground death veterans Malediction and Evoke.
The band began to write more new material from early-mid 94 which took on a more blackened death metal direction which was heavily influenced by the sound of a then young and upcoming swedish band Dissection. The band continued to play live and showcased some of this new material but in October 1994 Steve decided to quit the band due to personal/musical differences,Wallis also quit the band soon after leaving just three members left.
The band continued and in 1995 recorded the 3rd demo the more black/death sounding "Invoking the Storms" which saw Garry take over main vocal duties aswell as bass and some guitar,the band promoted this demo but later that year the band was soon to be put into the grave.ex members of this band went on to form and join Blessed Realm and Salute to the Sun links can be found at www.myspace.com/blessedrealmuk or click the salute page.thanks to Ola(Macabre End/God Macabre for setting up this page hail old death metal!!!!!