A bonus BotD this year! Happy 29th February from Morphide…
Simple things first – where are you guys from?
We are two musicians originally from Latvia, currently living in Copenhagen, Denmark.
How did you meet?
We were actually classmates, sharing a desk in a high school. We weren’t the best friends at that time, but both of us had our own bands, so sometimes we met outside the school as musicians. It connected us, therefore after moving to Denmark, we decided to start a band together.
How long have you been playing as a band?
On 23rd of March we will celebrate 5 years of working together as musicians. However, it has nothing to do with Morphide. In 2015 we started a cover band under another name. We were playing acoustic covers of rock songs to practice our recording and performance skills. Only in June 2019 we started Morphide and released our first song as a band.
Before you get sick of being asked… where does the band name come from?
We heard a legend about Quetzalcoatl, Mesoamerican deity of wind, air and learning, who came down to Earth in a shape of blue-winged butterfly Morphide, and we really loved it. The name Morphide also seemed to fit us really well.
What are your influences?
As, probably, every band, we have lots of them, and they are constantly changing. Currently we really dig Northlane, Spiritbox, Tesseract,Unprocessed and Karnivool.
Describe your music. What makes you unique?
Well, we are trying to write progressive metal songs with heavy riffs, unusual rhythmical structures and groovy bass, at the same time having atmospheric and melodic parts with lots of ambient guitars. This way we are trying to create the feeling of the song “breathing”. We also have both clean and extreme female vocals.
Do you have any particular lyrical themes?
We always write about something that bothers us. If we feel like we know the topic and can relate, we use it as an idea for the song. Usually it is something socially oriented, something, where personality is in the middle of the story, and human qualities are discussed.
What’s your live show like? How many shows have you played?
Our primary field of interest is good sound, so that everyone can hear our songs clearly and enjoy them, even if they listen to them for the first time. Therefore, we play all in digital. We are now also buying additional stage lights and a fog machine to enhance the visual aspects of the show as well. And, of course, we try to perform as well as we can every time.
Since we released our first single half a year ago, we are a pretty young band and haven’t had that many shows yet. However, we went on European tour in November 2019 and played 9 shows there.
What’s the wildest thing you’ve seen or done at a live show?
One of the craziest things we saw during a show was a guy, who broke his rib and fainted in an absolutely crazy moshpit on Meshuggah’s live concert. And he was extremely happy when he woke up! Oh, by the way, it was our guitar player, who toured with us last autumn, so you can imagine what kind of after-parties we’ve had.
What kit do you use / guitars do you play / etc.?
Without going too much into details, we have built our setup around a PC and a sound card. We have many plugins (Amp sims, delays, EQ etc) in our DAW that we automate for each song. Finally, we are using Line 6 Variax guitar which allows changing guitar tunings in a matter of seconds.
What, if anything, are you plugging/promoting at the moment?
We have recently released our new single called “Queen of Blame”. It is an intense and aggressive dynamic track with this dark atmosphere that creates tension and even some kind of anxiety. “Queen of Blame” delivers the idea of endless greedy and selfish thirst of goods without any attempt of adding even a tiny bit of effort to achieve them. The process of making a music video was very ambitious, with more than 20 people from 4 different countries participating in shootings. Many people compare the result with Mad Max.
What are your plans for 2020?
We have lots of studio work going on right now. There are two music videos currently in progress, so new singles are coming. We hope to release a full-length album by the end of 2020, as well as go on tour and participate in festivals.
If you were second on a three-band bill, which band would you love to be supporting and which band would you choose to open for you? A chance to plug someone you’ve toured with, or a mate’s band we’ve not heard of before!
We would be really happy to support Spiritbox, Northlane or Tesseract, or any other modern metal band to be honest! Regardings whom we’d like to take as support… We think the safest bet would be Bloodisle – a fresh new metal band from Poland. These guys are bloody beasts, we were super impressed how much energy they put in their performance! Sharing a stage with them again would be a blast!
Header image by Jekaterina Sugaka
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