Even among the accursed crypts of death metal, true legends never stay buried.
Back in 2017, Spawn of Possession were lowered into the grave, leaving behind a swarm of influence. Many fellow demons have followed in their inexplicable wake. But after festering underground for much of the past decade, just last year, SoP respawned as Retromorphosis. In the process, they’ve unlocked the missing link in tech-death’s evolutionary chain.
Today, Retromorphosis are ringing in 2025 with the second single off their upcoming debut album Psalmus Mortis. On “The Tree”, this new band of proven killers turn an age-old tale into fresh cosmic horror thanks to some old-school tricks of the trade.
Watch the tale-twisting visualizer for “The Tree”.
Psalmus Mortis comes out February 21 on Season of Mist.
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Last year, Jonas Bryssling and his old Spawn of Possession bandmates returned from the shadows on their screamer of a lead single “Vanished”. But Retromorphosis are no apparition. True to its name, the second single from Psalmus Mortis towers above the field.
“The Tree” springs to life with the familiar crunch of Bryssling’s filthy riffs. But the song quickly branches out into freshly rotted rhythmic offshoots. New transplant KC Howard (ex Decrepit Birth) shakes his drum kit with the shattering force of an earthquake. “I prefer my death metal to sound ugly and mean”, Bryssling says with a satisfied grin.
For Psalmus Mortis, Retromorphosis reunited with fellow Swede Magnus Sedenberg, who’s been their preferred engineer of death since Spawn of Possession’s first two demos. But for their new album, they opted for more of the raw production that defined the scene during the early ’90s. Though knotted with mind-bending leads and a splintering, white-hot solo that’ll make you wonder if the band’s dueling axemen have grown an extra ten fingers, “The Tree” is cold and unmoving thanks to Erlend Caspersen’s bludgeoning bass grooves.
“There was no hesitation”, Bryssling says about respawning with his old bandmates as Retromorphosis. “I don’t have to tell them much. They know how it’s done”.
While less techy, Retromorphosis still delight in concocting freakish experiments. Just below the topsoil of the mix, a glowing bed of organ shrouds “The Tree” in an alien chill. “That’s something old-school bands had”, Bryssling says about the song’s foreboding atmosphere. “I really like that. The organ is my favorite instrument. I just kept adding it to every song”.
All of the tales within Psalmus Mortis are grim, but “The Tree” stems from a truly evil fantasy. “There’s a theory that all human consciousness is connected like the nodes on a tree”, Bryssling says. “This song is about a greedy man who tries to harvest that tree, only to ruin it”. Everyone’s heard the story of the Garden of Eden, but Retromorphosis have no mercy when it comes to enforcing eternal punishment. It ends with a sinister twist, but fans won’t be surprised to learn that things turn out badly for the song’s anti-hero. “Everything around him was dead“, our gruesome narrator Dennis Röndum growls with maniacal laughter.
“We had rules in Spawn of Possession”, Bryssling explains when asked what separates Retromorphosis from his earlier offspring. “Everything had to always be so intense. Retromorphosis is more free. Psalmus Mortis can be eerie, doomy or even quite simple”.
The visualizer for “The Tree” was created by Titanforged Productions.
