Morphide is the husband-and-wife project of guitarist and songwriter Chris and vocalist Eissa Zhovnerchuk, originally from Latvia and now based in Copenhagen. Since 2019’s debut single “Mayhem,” the band has built a serious international following, crossing seven million combined streams with their sophomore album “Mental.” At the center of that record sits “Of Healing,” a five-song suite built around Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s five stages of grief, moving through “Denial,” “Anger,” and “Bargaining” before arriving at “Acceptance (Follow Me)” – the emotional resolution of the whole arc. Mixed and mastered by George Lever, who’s worked with Sleep Token, Loathe, and Thornhill, the album is also produced in part by Forrester Savell, whose work with Animals as Leaders, Twelve Foot Ninja, and Karnivool carries serious weight in the modern metal world. Savell is also closely associated with Neural DSP, and it’s hard to listen to the guitar tones on this record without hearing some of that fingerprint in the mix.
Outside of the album, Morphide has built a real audience through vocal covers – most notably a rendition of Linkin Park‘s “The Emptiness Machine” that went properly viral, racking up hundreds of thousands of views and a flood of comments from listeners stunned that Eissa handles both Mike Shinoda’s and Emily Armstrong’s parts entirely on her own. That range is exactly what makes “Acceptance” land as hard as it does. The track has to carry the emotional weight of resolution after four songs of unprocessed grief, and Eissa’s vocal performance does that work convincingly, shifting from vulnerability to power without losing the thread between them. The production gives her room to do it – atmospheric where it needs to breathe, crushing where the song demands release.
As the closing chapter of “Of Healing,” “Acceptance (Follow Me)” earns its place. Grief suites are a difficult thing to pull off without tipping into melodrama, and Morphide manages the trick of making the resolution feel earned rather than simply arrived at. Between the conceptual ambition of “Mental” and the genuine internet traction of their cover work, Morphide are positioned to be one of the more interesting names to watch in European metal over the next few years.
