Heavy metal, as a distinct genre, emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s. But it wasn't until the early 1980s that it gained significant popularity. Even then, most recording studios were ill-equipped to record and mix the aggressive, frantic beats that demand a lot of its instruments and vocals.
But Morrisound Recording gained a reputation for its engineers' ability to do justice to the music, and after the success of albums from the studio's first three Tampa Bay area-based metal bands — Savatage, Nasty Savage and Obituary —musicians from around the world flocked to the studio.
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Tom Morris, who founded the studio in 1981 with his brother, Jim, said metal can be a difficult genre to work with from the technical side.
"Extreme metal is a genre that demands that every instrument is enormous, and that makes it difficult to keep things in perspective without it just turning to where it sounds like it's all blended together and muddy and unclear," Morris explained.
Morris added that the studio worked to develop techniques for recording and mixing that created the quality it is known for.
"I think we brought to the table – that others weren't at the time – attention to production quality that allowed us to create mixes that had instruments that were all loud, which is what metal is kind of about, and still be able to hear them clearly as individual instruments," Morris said.
Last week, the Hillsborough County Historical Advisory acknowledged Morrisound's legacy with a tall, metal historical marker — one of more than 150 across unincorporated Hillsborough, Tampa, Temple Terrace and Plant City.
The marker was unveiled at 12111 N. 56th St., Temple Terrace — home of Morrisound's studio when metal popularity surged — during a private ceremony with the Morris brothers, historical advisory members, members of the homegrown Savatage, Nasty Savage, and Obituary, and others.
Afterward, they migrated to a public celebration at Magnanimous Brewing to enjoy several metal-inspired beers, with names like Museum of Metal, Relic of Damnation, Wherever I May Foam and Juice Lord & Savior.
There, long-time fans like David Allison reminisced about the early days of extreme metal.
"Sometimes I was referred to as a Morrisound rat, and there were a few of us, and we would take the bands that were recording, give the engineers a break, and take the bands out on the town because they wanted to see Tampa," Allison said.
Allison helps curate metal memorabilia through the Tampa Bay Museum of Metal, a pop-up museum that more recently set up at Magnanimous to show off a collection of instruments, stage gear and props, stage-worn clothing, backdrops, photos, flyers, art and more collected from bands and fans over the past few decades.
He said he's thrilled about the marker.
"I thought it should have been done many years ago. There's hundreds of bands that came here from all over the world to record metal, all styles of metal, not just death metal, but all styles," Allison said. "It's so awesome that they're finally getting that recognition, which we already knew for many years, that they were the baddest studio in the world to us and to a lot of others."
While a lot of the conversation centered around metal's past, the celebration also drew the attention of newer metal fans, like Isabella Sandoval, who runs a pop-up bookstore, Itimpi, with her mother.
Sandoval brought two of the books they sell, "Tampa Bay Music Roots" and "Secret Tampa Bay: A Guide to the Weird, Wonderful and Obscure," for the Morris brothers to sign.
"[Metal] doesn't sound like anything else. You know, the culture and, like, the throwing stuff around. ... It's very, like, active. So, yeah, that's interesting," she said.
Morrisound Recording now resides in Sulphur Springs at 8003 N. Ninth St., where the studio records far more than just extreme metal albums, Morris said.
"I think the one thing I might want to emphasize is that in spite of the fact that this is a plaque about, or a marker about, our contribution to the metal world, we do a lot of work in other genres as well, [like] jazz and rock and country," Morris said. "So it's easy to ... if you Googled Morrisound Recording, probably the first thing you'd see is the birthplace of death metal. But we're actually a lot more than just that."
The Temple Terrace studio was sold in 2014 to Trans-Siberian Orchestra. TSO - a rock band known for its ambitious light shows - also has roots in Tampa and has previously recorded with Morrisound.
