In a new interview with author Sam Retzer for Tape Op magazine, legendary death metal producer SCOTT BURNS has reflected on the early days of a genre he helped build — and on how the world initially dismissed it as nothing more than a passing fad.
"I think death metal was seen perhaps as a passing trend," Burns says with characteristic understatement. The comment encapsulates the disbelief that surrounded the Tampa death metal scene in the late 1980s and early 1990s — when a small cluster of bands operating out of Morrisound Recording were quietly laying the foundations for one of the most enduring subgenres in rock history.
Burns' production credits read like a who's who of death metal's golden era: ATHEIST (Unquestionable Presence, 1991), DEATH (Human, 1991), OBITUARY (Slowly We Rot, 1989; Cause of Death, 1990), MORBID ANGEL (Blessed Are the Sick, 1991), DEICIDE, SEPULTURA, MALEVOLENT CREATION — albums that decades later remain touchstones of the genre.
What made Morrisound Recording special, Burns explains, was its sense of community. "Everyone knew each other," he recalls. Experienced session musicians like guitarist JAMES MURPHY and drummer ALEX MARQUEZ could step in on short notice to elevate recordings by younger, developing bands. The studio functioned less like a conventional recording facility and more like a shared village of expertise and enthusiasm.
Burns admits surprise at how far the genre's vocal techniques have since spread. The extreme, guttural approaches pioneered by JOHN TARDY, CHUCK SCHULDINER, and others — once considered so uncommercial as to be absurd — are now standard-issue across countless metal subgenres and have even filtered into mainstream music.
The interview complements "The Scott Burns Sessions: A Life In Death Metal 1987–1997," a 480-page oral history published by Decibel Books in 2023 that documents in exhaustive detail the stories behind some of metal's most celebrated records.