Paul Guzzo at The Tampa Tribune recently caught up with producers Jim and Tom Morris, owners of the legendary Morrisound Studios in Florida, who have been responsible for recording stellar albums from bands including Cannibal Corpse, Obituary, Iced Earth, Savatage, Death, Savatage and the Trans-Siberian Orchestra to name a few. Following is an excerpt from the story.

The Morris brothers, who gained fame for themselves and Tampa by giving death metal a huge sound, are looking for a smaller place.

The studio Morrisound Recording rose to prominence in the 1980s by mastering production of the genre defined by distorted guitars, heavy drums and demonic vocals.

“Death metal bands want everything to be huge,” said Jim Morris, 57, who created the studio with his brother Tom. “The guitars have to be huge. The drums have to huge. The vocals have to be huge. It has a huge sound.”

Their expertise turned Tampa into the death metal capital of the world and helped them launch the careers of musicians who would later found the internationally acclaimed Trans-Siberian Orchestra.

But with advances in recording technology that allow musicians to lay down tracks in a space no bigger than their bedrooms, it’s time for Morrisound to downsize.

The studio was built for a full band to record every note of every song and to turn the work into a final product.

“Our big studio had become outdated,” Tom Morris. “We built it when the technology was not readily available or affordable for people to record in their homes. Now, every musician seems to have a mini-recording studio in their bedrooms.”

Today, professional studios like Morrisound are used primarily for mixing into a polished product the tracks that band members record on their own.

The only instrument most bands need to record in a professional studio is a drum kit.

“To do that right you need anywhere from 10 to 15 microphones and an acoustic space designed well enough so the drums sound good,” Tom Morris said. “You can’t do that in a bedroom.”

Said Jim Morris, “The music industry changes and as it does, so must we.”

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