Biography

Morbid was formed in Stockholm

Stockholm

Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...

, Sweden

Sweden

Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....

 in 1986. With Per Yngve "Dead" Ohlin

Dead (musician)

Per Yngve Ohlin , better known by his stage name Dead, was a Swedish black metal vocalist best known for his work with Norwegian black metal band Mayhem...

 as the group's founder and mastermind, they had a revolving door of members before settling on the line-up of John "John Lennart" Hagström and "TG" on guitars, Jens Näsström on bass and Lars-Göran Petrov on drums. When "TG" left the band, Ulf Cederlund took over. The band then recorded their debut demo

Demo (music)

A demo version or demo of a song is one recorded for reference rather than for release. A demo is a way for a musician to approximate their ideas on tape or disc, and provide an example of those ideas to record labels, producers or other artists...

, December Moon, at Thunderload Studios in Stockholm on December 5–6, 1987. This was the only recording featuring this line-up, as Hagström quit and Ohlin left for Norway

Norway

Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...

 to join the legendary black metal

Black metal

Black metal is an extreme subgenre of heavy metal music. Common traits include fast tempos, shrieked vocals, highly distorted guitars played with tremolo picking, blast beat drumming, raw recording, and unconventional song structure....

 band Mayhem

Mayhem (band)

Mayhem is a Norwegian black metal band formed in 1984 in Oslo, Norway and regarded as one of the pioneers of the influential Norwegian black metal scene...

. The remains of the band tried to carry on, and brought in photographer John Scarisbrick as a new vocalist. Scarisbrick happened to live near a recording studio named Sunlight, which would later gain some notoriety in death metal circles, recording bands like Entombed

Entombed (band)

Entombed is a Swedish death metal band which formed in 1987 under the name of Nihilist. Though Entombed began their career as an early pioneer of Scandinavian death metal which initially differed itself from its American counterpart with its distinct guitar tone, by the early 1990s their sound had...

 and Dismember

Dismember (band)

Dismember was a Swedish death metal band that formed in 1988. They are well known in the death metal underground. They split up in October 2011.-History:...

. It was there that the band recorded their swan song, another demo entitled The Last Supper, in September 1988. The band faded as Petrov and Cederlund started Nihilist

Nihilist (band)

Nihilist was a Swedish Scandinavian death metal band formed in 1987 by Nicke Andersson and Alex Hellid.The band split-up in 1989 when Johnny Hedlund left to form Unleashed...

, which eventually turned into Entombed. Näsström later continued in the bands Contras and Skull.

Legacy

Although Morbid only officially released those two demos, they gained a certain cult-status

Cult following

A cult following is a group of fans who are highly dedicated to a specific area of pop culture. A film, book, band, or video game, among other things, will be said to have a cult following when it has a small but very passionate fan base...

 after their demise, most likely due in part to Ohlin's efforts with Mayhem, and the fact that he committed suicide

Suicide

Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...

 in 1991. Both the demo-recordings and various live/rehearsal tracks have later made it onto vinyl and CD, on both official and bootleg

Bootleg recording

A bootleg recording is an audio or video recording of a performance that was not officially released by the artist or under other legal authority. The process of making and distributing such recordings is known as bootlegging...

 releases.

Discography

• Rehearsal 07/08/1987 (demo, 1987)
• December Moon (demo, 1987)
• Last Supper (demo, 1988)
• December Moon (EP, 1994)
• Death Execution (compilation, 1995)
• Live in Stockholm (LP
  LP album
  The LP, or long-playing microgroove record, is a format for phonograph records, an analog sound storage medium. Introduced by Columbia Records in 1948, it was soon adopted as a new standard by the entire record industry...
  
  , Reaper, 2000)
• Death Execution III (7", Reaper, 2001)
• Year of the Goat (compilation, Century Media, 2011)