Amorphous is the follow-up music project of Gil O. Santos, a Brazilian Electro-/Industrial musician who has made himself a quite good name with his previous, almost legendary project Morgue or also known under the alter ego Morgue (Mechanism) and a couple of highly recognized releases via the Brazilian label Cri Du Chat accompanied with licensing deals to the German labels Subtronic ("The Mind Is A Labyrinth" - 1994) and Off Beat ("The Sweet Apology Of Death"- 1997). Once started as a duo, later on been active as a trio, Morgue (Gil O. Santos, Marcelo Manieri - RIP, and Rene R. S. Menezes) existed at least between 1990 to 2010 and can be seen as the best-known and most influential Brazilian Dark Electro-/Industrial-project next to Aghast View in the mid-90s.

Not to be forgotten are the early years of this project with a vital being in the international tape-recording scene thanks to such sensational releases like "Scatology" (which later became due to its success the CD release "The Mind Is A Labyrinth" on Cri Du Chat / Subtronic Records) or their debut "Breaking All The Bones" as well as with various "Live Actions" performances recorded on tape around the dark music clubs in the Sao Paulo area.
Also the highly recognized international collaborations of this music project with the Slovakian webzine-legend Crewzine, Germany's Stillbirth Management and a few self-released compilation tapes under Gil's very own small tape label New Will Productions needs to be mentioned. It has always and forever been the managing part of Gil to kick out the best possible promotional efforts to push Morgue and to present this fine Brazilian Electro/Industrial-project to a wider audience and to leave the boundaries of Brazil behind. One of the latest actions of Gil has been that he has invested some free time to digitalize some of his good old tape-treasures and they can be freely downloaded a this Bandcamp website: https://morguemechanism.bandcamp.com/ Get these goodies!

It needs to be said that it has been especially Gil, his smart and friendly kind, his personal contacts and friendship built up around the globe in times when there wasn't email or social media available. Morgue and in person of Gil has left Brazil to storm the stages with unforgetable live performances in 1995 in Bratislava (Slovakia) and Bremen (Germany). Those days have been eventful and unforgetable especially in Bremen (first Morgue live performance in Germany ever...) connected with me personally and they still bring back a smile on my grim face.

After the last audio sign of Morgue with the compilation "The Dark Files" in 2007 it has become silent around this project. Gil has made in the 2000er years some musically different experiments into Longue-, Chillout- and Psytrance-music (Mukunga Umbura / album release "Secret Vision" in 2003 under the Italian label Inpsyde Media) and due to ongoing financially problems and his inner unsatisfaction with his daily job as well as the draining situation of Brazils politically system and difficult economy, he made the hard decision to leave his home country and culture behind and immigrated to Brighton, UK. Finally and since the things turned out to be more relaxing to live in Europe, Gil established his own label brand with Semantics Productions and so also Amorphous came into life for the restart into the field of classic Electro/Industrial music again, finally that kind of music he's really into and without any timeline or economic pressure.

And while I've rambled far too much of heroic deeds of our almost mutually experienced past, this is finally meant to be a review on this new, initially self-released Amorphous album "Moth Metaphor", the third studio album after the debut "Behaviourism" (2015) and the follow-up "Shapeshifting" in 2017. Amorphous picks up musically the path which Morgue has left incompleted, although there are differences between both projects to point out. Compared with the often rather filmic and interlaced song structures of Morgue especially noticed on "The Sweet Apology Of Death", Armorphous is definitely the more upbeating, pounding and more dynamically sounding alter ego. Gil's recent song structures rather concentrate to focus on its percussive moments instead to drown too deep into the dense ambience Morgue has been known and appreciated for. This kind of work can be reduced on a simple formula: if Morgue has ever been inspired by Skinny Puppy, then Amorphous turns rather into the Front Line Assembly playing field.

Although the opener "Kingdom of Darkness" kicks off with a mighty and ominous sounding lead synthpad accented by piano-like drops, it doesn't take too long until the raw bass line and the tricky arranged percussion elements take control over the song structure. "Blackout" shows simplification in its building by repeating a voice sample phrase over and over again but it shows precise and well-thought bass line and rhythm programming skills. With the exeption of the instrumental tune "The Mystic Man" and the rather poem-like outro track "Our Deepest Fear" by Jacques Brel and read by Dennis O'Connor, Gil's vocal performance needs to be pointed out. If Morgue have left impact on you in the past with their dramatic sounding performance by Rene R. S. Menezes, don't be surprised that the style of Gil's vocal expression is quite comparable - if not similar.
"Wasteland" then sounds for the most part as being a relic of the more Puppy-related past than any other track on "Moth Metaphor", as this one brings back a lot of haunting synth pads in a slower, more stalking-like song tempo filled with bizarre voice samples, surpringly incoming song interruptions and with Gil's FX-driven vocals.
Highlight and surely the most FLA-inspired tune is to me personally is "Unknown Things" with its solid kick and snare-work, pushing synth bass lines and some Wumpscut-like German voice samples ("Überall Hass..." - hasn't this been actually never sampled by anyone else before? ). Surely the track with the best balance between dancefloor-compatibility and athmospheric content.

Just in case and to avoid any misunderstandings: we have here a full-scale authentic-sounding release of classic inspired Dark Electro / Industrial music. I am sorry to say it, but no Trancewhackedgoregalore / no oontz-oontz Techno as well as no preset-sound-recording music-environment has been used to create this highly recommended Dark Electro/Industrial album. This fact - and the provided quality speaks for itself - has been also made its impact on the Russian label Razgrom Music and their founder Alexey Ignatov as this fine and growing label has released meanwhile the CD version of "Moth Metaphor" in a limited edition of 300 exemplars. It needs to be added that 3 bonus tracks ("Confinamiento", "Kingdom Of Darkness (Empire Version)", and "A New Morning") have made their way onto the silver plastic circle. Top notch work of all people involved and a must-have release for every fan of this music genre.