Morta Skuld Channel Old-School Fury on "Creation Undone" (Interview)

Famed heavy metal manager Eric Greif approached Morta Skuld’s Dave Gregor in 2011 with a simple task; put his band’s demos onto a CD. Greif was a pivotal death metal player in the 90s despite not being an instrumentalist. He managed acts like Death and Obituary while also representing his clients as their lawyer. Morta Skuld was another of Greif’s clients, but they’d been broken up for over a decade when Greif, undaunted, asked him to retouch the demos. 

Gregor asked the demo recording line-up if they were interested in performing a few live shows. From there, Morta Skuld rose back to life, re-releasing their demos through Relapse Records, recruiting new band members, and delivering two full-length albums. Not bad work for a couple of pesky requests from a passionate manager.

The group’s latest album, Creation Undone, arrived last month via Peaceville Records, and it sounds just as hungry as their early albums. There’s a reason for this; Gregor wants his due. This isn’t to say he has an unchecked ego. Morta Skuld’s 1993 debut, Dying Remains, is an underrated old-school death metal banger, released perhaps a few years too late to impact the genre at large but held in high regard by those who’ve heard it. 

Dying Remains’ bread-and-butter death metal was also closer to what crawled out of the Floridian swamps than what Morta Skuld’s Peaceville label contemporaries were recording. They were far from Darkthrone or My Dying Bride. Whatever it was, Dying Remains did not receive the same fanfare as its contemporaries despite its quality. Since the group’s reformation, Gregor has tightened the musicianship, sharpened the production, and narrowed in on his lyrics all in service of, in his words, “...fighting for our piece of turf or recognition.”

Such a determined goal contrasts with Gregor’s small-town homeliness. He’s easy to chat with, courteous, and eager to heap praise on all those who he’s crossed paths with. He’s proud of his music and the contributions of others, which leads into the discourse surrounding Creation Undone’s album art. Online comments have blasted Gregor and Morta Skuld as a whole for the record’s supposedly AI-generated cover. They’re not the only act who’ve employed artificial intelligence to the dismay of fans as of late. 

High On Fire’s recent music video for “Burning Down” is an inhuman mess of artificial intelligence grappling with the human face’s contours. Deicide’s upcoming album Banished by Sin features an entirely AI-generated cover. Both pieces are dystopian and unnerving, though unintentionally. Their execution leaves much to be desired, as if the concepts went from the drawing board to the production line without ever being touched by a living being. 

Creation Undone’s case isn’t that simple. Gregor covered the entire fiasco in full during our conversation, but the short story is that he received the cover art from a friend (not knowing that it was initially AI) and approved the label’s request to have artists and painters rework it. It’s been repainted and altered by human hands for hours on end. Given how involved the process was, Gregor stands proud of the final product, but irritated by those who have been quick to judge the artwork without that context.

None of this has changed Gregor’s aim, which is to create death metal that satisfies his cravings. Read our conversation with him below wherein he discusses his influences, how COVID-19 affected Undone Creation’s concept, and, of course, the AI art. 

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Your new record is so crisp and clear that you could give it to someone who’s never heard death metal, and they would understand the genre. So, I was wondering, when did that clarity become a goal for you? 

It started with the demos. I started late in life; I was 21 when I started playing guitar. Death’s Leprosy was my first introduction, and I just loved the way the guitar and his voice sounded. Everything was just clear. And then I went to Carcass’ first record, and I couldn’t listen to it. The production was just too rough. So, I made it a point to have crispy clear guitars. I would say Dying Remains doesn’t have that production, but as we progressed as a band and became more seasoned players, especially as you add influences like Malevolent Creation and stuff like that, we realized we wanted a crisp guitar sound. It was a constant development. 

Then, we hit Surface, and we were already three albums in. Surface had a real nice production, and I've followed that ever since. We always strive for the best drum, guitar, and vocal sounds we can get. If I setp in the studio and the vocals don’t sound great one day, I’ll say we should try again another day. So, we strive for the best and what we want to hear. I think that's the key. On Suffer for Nothing, I was preoccupied with what the fans wanted to hear. On this record, I focused on what I liked and what I wanted to do because I know there are like-minded people out there, and if I like what I'm doing, then they will too. 

Your new music isn’t just Dying Remains: The 30th Anniversary. It’s got different ideas; your vocals have changed, and the production is sharp. You guys have evolved. 

I have different musicians now too, which helps. Eric House, for example, puts his spin on things. What's great about him is, he’ll play the original songs as they were made. He’ll still put those nuances in there, so the fans can still enjoy it as it was. 

What I wanted to chat about was the prominence of your lyrics and vocals on Creation Undone. For comparison, Dying Remains was very in line with death metal lyrics in the 90s. But now, your lyrics are a central focus. How did that approach develop with you? 

Honestly, man, the lyrics are the most tedious part of the process. I was reading an article about Max Cavalerra, and he said he hated writing lyrics, and I’m right there with him. It can be fun, but sometimes it can be painstaking because you wonder if it makes sense to other people. I just write about what I experience and what I feel in the moment. I've been asked if they're political. They're not Napalm Death political, but I think there's some politicism behind my lyrics because that's what we were going through at the time. COVID came and knocked everyone down. We were told “you can't go out of your house” in some instances. The gyms were shut down. I lost three jobs. I feel like it's just now that some people are starting to come out of it. It debilitated me, too, after I lost my job. I didn't wanna go to work cause I didn't wanna put up with the BS. I just wanted to go to work and do my thing. 

If people wanna go out and do a certain thing, go do it. But, I feel like we were strong-armed to do a lot of things during that particular time. So I just wrote about what I felt and what I was going through at the time. There's some dark shit in there. My buddy Frank Rini helped me write some songs. He wrote two songs lyrically because I hit a roadblock halfway through the album. What I liked about his lyrics is that he’s a vocalist, meaning I had to chop up some of his lyrics because he writes more than I would write. Through that process, his lyrics influenced me. I started writing more myself. It’s an homage to Eric Greif. Write what you know, not what you don’t know. 

There are songs like “Painful Conflict” that are obviously about social isolation and lockdown and being angry at that. What I liked about your approach is that it’s focused on how you, Dave Gregor, reacted to it. It’s more relatable. 

I love how you put that. I’m not telling people what to do, and I don't want to be told what to do. When that time came out, I had a ton of people who were angry at me because of my stance on certain things. I lost some friends over it, stuff like that. It was too bad that we couldn't agree to disagree anymore. I think that’s what’s lost in society. You can have a decent conversation with people and not agree with them. It's okay that we don’t all agree. 

I also wanted to talk about “Unforeseen Obstacles,” which discusses mental health but looks at it from the perspective of questioning if there’s something bigger and more institutional than us that’s fucking with our heads in a way to make us more prone to dealing with mental illness. How did that track come about?

A little bit of that. A little bit of my guitar player, Scott, was going through what seemed to be a new obstacle every week for some time. But at the same point, it's about the obstacles that have been put in our place that, not to say cut our joy off, but were COVID-related. It was written with a couple of things in mind, but the premise of it was overcoming these hurdles and walls that keep coming up in front of us every week. 

The whole album, then, is that we’re all in isolation and detailing what's going on in our heads about it. 

Yeah, and how do we all deal with it? It's mostly about all of us being in it together. Whether we disagree, we are all in this together. We are all human beings on this planet, and we have to live together right now. That's how the title of the record came about. This creation that was made for us is literally unraveling. At the time, it was so overwhelming that I felt the world was coming to an end. The phrase explains how I was feeling inside. 

What does the phrase “creation undone” mean to you?

It means stripping humanity down and starting over. You hear about the political aspect of the Great Reset and other stuff. It made me think that we’re all stuck at home; if you wanna work, you’re forced to get a vaccine, in certain cases. Speaking just to that, I believe to each their own, I have no problems with any of it. But, I also felt almost forced to do anything, and I wondered if this was humanity’s end. I wondered if this was it for me. 

I'll say it this way. The world as we knew it is gone. We're entering this next phase of life now versus what it was 10 years ago. 

From my perspective, there was a two- or three-year period when everything was drastically different, then life got close to how it was before. I can't speak for you, so I’m wondering if you noticed things have returned back to the way they were before?

Some days, I recognize that certain things are gone, but I think we’re 80% back to where we were. There’s still 20% that’ll never go back to the way it was. I remember when I was a kid, we were interested in shoveling snow to make money and cutting lawns, stuff like that. It seems like the newer generation does not want to do any of that, but that could be a generational thing too. I would say we’re 80% back, but there’s still 20% of things that have changed. 

For instance, I practice Brazilian jiu-Jitsu, and there are some guys that come to practice that still bring up mask mandates and vaccines and they ascribe toughness to opposing those things. It’s like, that was years ago. 

Sometimes, I see people in their cars wearing masks still, and I think that if it gives them a sense of security, then that’s fine. To each their own. Everyone should be able to do what they want. But honestly, I don’t even like using the word COVID cause it was such a nasty time for all of us. I don't wanna keep using it, so I say “that time period” or “what we went through.” But we’re moving on from that; let’s be present now. 

I wanted to talk about the cover art because I’ve seen the discourse, people disputing saying it’s AI or not, some people digging it, and some people don’t like that it’s AI. What’s your take on the situation? 

Oh, man. Wow. Yeah. There are a couple of people out there who are really beating us up over it. I don’t want to get defensive over it because I don't have anything to defend. My stance is that if you don’t like it, then don’t buy it. 

The truth is, I was gifted a piece of art by Matt Bishop, my buddy. We were looking for artwork, and I contacted Ed Repka (who did the early artwork for Death) and Travis Smith. I told them my idea, and their prices were $3,000-$5,000. We couldn’t afford that, so we started looking into other artists, but nothing was sticking out. My buddy Matt told me he bought a piece off of Mike Wyatt that’s over a year old. We looked at it and I thought it was decent. I didn’t think it was AI. I didn’t think anything of it. I submitted it to the label, and they asked if it was an AI piece. I didn’t know, so I contacted Mike, and he said it was an AI piece. 

The label said they wanted it to have a human feel to it, so they hired an illustrator and a painter. Literally, the piece is no longer an AI piece. It has 40 hours of man hours into it in terms of human beings touching it. We took the elements from the AI piece that we liked about it, and we had an illustrator come up with different things. All my role in it was, the label would send me a rendition and ask whether I liked it—yes or no. The entire background is all painting. The globe is illustrated and painted. What I'm trying to tell people is that it's not really an AI piece anymore. It started off that way. But it's not anymore. We had two human beings work on it for over 40 hours to make it look the way it does now. 

So it wasn’t because you were shopping for an AI. You saw a piece from a friend, the label asked if it was AI, and you found out it was. You weren’t looking for AI art, you just liked the piece. 

Yeah. There are people out there saying we ripped guys off, but I don’t even have an AI generator on my computer. I didn’t do anything. I was gifted it by my buddy Matt. The label didn’t like AI-ness and wanted to make it more human. They said, “Let’s redo it; let’s touch it up.” I love it. I got the vinyl the other day, and it looks awesome. To the people who don’t like it, don’t buy it. But for people to say that we’re ripping people off and taking money out of artist’s mouths, that’s effing ridiculous. We employed two people for this art piece. But there will always be people that hate, and even if it's bad publicity, it’s still publicity. 

The thing was, and this is what bugs me, there are other covers that have been photoshopped. Is Photoshop a form of AI too? Where is all the hate for all the covers that have been photoshopped? But I think it’s a sign of the times we live in. If you go back three years ago, this wouldn't even be a discussion. But now, everyone is a keyboard warrior. But I don’t wanna be defensive about it cause I have nothing to defend. 

You gave a quote about your recording process that goes, “I think we were just angry and hungry, so to speak, and I think it just came out in the music.” That’s still true, but how would you say your anger and hunger has changed compared to the Morta Skuld of 1993? 

We’re all older, and as you get older, you mature. When we were writing Dying Remains, we did two demos. We had no clue what we were doing. I was going through marital problems at the time. Now, we’re more seasoned and mature. We have seven records under our belt, so we know the process. We know what we’re going to do. 

But also, I think when I write about stuff, it’s stuff that makes me angry or that I'm angry over. I think that comes out when we’re writing a piece. It comes across due to the type of band we are. I've heard people say that we’re underrated and that we’re always overlooked, and I kinda feel like that sometimes, so I think that comes out not only in my lyrics and my approach and the energy I put into it. I still feel like we’re struggling. We’re not Obituary or Cannibal Corpse. We’re Morta Skuld, and we’re still fighting for our piece of turf or recognition or whatever. You know how some bands make it to a certain point, and they know they’ve made it, then they relax? We’ve never made it there, so we still feel like we’re always acting on emotion. We’re always propelling ourselves forward to the next destination. 

We’re not trying to reinvent the wheel. We just want to write, record, and play good solid death metal that we ourselves wanna listen to.

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Creation Undone released February 23rd via Peaceville.