Morbid AngelOriginal Death Metal - Spinoza Ray Prozak's Pick of the Aeon
Formative genetic material of death metal, this band formed in 1984 and released its first album in 1987, being inspired by Slayer but eventually moving on to more progressive works with the genre-definitive Blessed Are the Sick in 1991. Progressive, rhythmic, complex and evil death metal with lyrics well-crafted from Sumerian and Lovecraftian domains. Not surprisingly, Covenant was the first death metal album released on a major label as even musicians outside the genre found the band technically and artistically impressive.
Review: Early versions of songs made classic on the first two Morbid Angel releases and one song of the third. If you are a collector these reveal several things: 1) the development of older rock style riffing (a la Judas Priest) mutating into more acerbic progressive styles, 2) the lead guitar of Trey Azagthoth in a more rationalistic mood, where it works through all of its phrases before concluding rather than elliding movements for listener clarity, and 3) where the development of strum-based riffing occurred (negative space from memory).
1. Invocation / Chapel Of Ghouls As in all Morbid Angel releases, the point of focus is the fast and flagrantly complex guitar fiendishness from Azagthoth, both in the form of architectural, nihilisitc, Slayer-style riffing and in organic solos of massive complexity. Mike Browning plays drums and does vocals, while Sterling Scarborough handles bass, but neither of these players are as strong as their more familiar replacements. In some instances, Browning's vocal inflection of rhythm seems more polished than the later work of David Vincent, but overall the style is far less defined.
Starting with a nonsubtle introduction of evil chanting (and response) in the rain of a storm, this release also reveals the album-wide goals Azagthoth had for his albums in their introduction, agitation, statements and resolution. The invocation enters the listener into a new world of sound; afterwards it is a lightning fast filmstrip of different geometries in riffs marching past the listener, in ripping bridges or speedy verses. Amazing artistry struggling in its nascent glory, "Abominations" is a classic need for every Morbid Angel fan.
Review: Raw origins of death metal carved from deliberately minimalistic power chord metal, inspired by both the roughest of the savage and primitive black metal bands and the most architected of modern music. In the style of death metal pioneers Slayer this band wraps a sequence of quickly-strummed notes into a phrase or melody, working the rhythms and atonal similarities to integrate chromatic and dissonant tonal combinations.
Strumming power chords in speeding columns of energy, guitars synchronize with bass to communicate multiple rhythms through complex and violent stroke patterns. Rigid precision percussion nails emphatic moments and gives significance to fills, otherwise lost in the speeding alteration of phrases. Of all the bands to attempt this ambient style of composition, where percussion becomes the matrix and the lead instruments change the rhythm in a "riff salad" of recombinant phrasing, Morbid Angel are the most eminently qualified in the simple wisdom of their phrase construction, the elegance of their minimalism, the patterned refractive complexity that gives evidence to their conceptual mastery.
1. Immortal Rites A strong narrative voice guides each song through its developments as its conflict is unveiled, leading through the seemingly chaotic front to the implications of what will be the revelation. Like black metal and some death metal to follow, Morbid Angel use extensive epiphanies to unify their songs much in the style of later Ozzy period Black Sabbath, although at a much faster pace. Their abilities to encode several rhythms into any part of a riff create songs of boundless potential, aggression and energy unified in a mystical force under a moving rhythm.
This release is foundational to death metal and highly influential on much of the underground music to follow, including unrelated genres. Trey Azagthoth's maniacal atonal lead guitar inverts symphonies into nihilistic and expressive masterpiece works of sculpture, using technique and composition in liberated ways at high speed and high density complexity. Rhythm, as liberated in this album, freed guitar to intermix the speed of chord changes (and the form of the main riff) with the hummingbird wings of strumming frequency, in which was interwoven the wrist motion of the player, adding another layer of whipping, driving tempo to the mixture.
Epic and meaningful lyrics depoliticize evil in favor of encoding darker more confrontational elements of the human soul, namely our weakness and destructability in face of the energy gained through the metaphorical "ancient ways" of mystical power. Complexity in lyrical meaning hides under metered verse with an intense study of metal vocal rhythm with elements of rock music titrated out, and meta-composition shows on the song and album level that through careful cutting and layering of work into the songs from their youth, Morbid Angel made a vast masterpiece.
Review: Seeking to outdo the intensely conceived and designed "Altars of Madness," Morbid Angel moved their music from continuously flowing speeding death metal to counterpoint creations using rhythmic and textural offsets to reflect the cyclic conflict of epic battle.
Violent and contorted, these riffs use all of death metal's lexicon plus add muffled chords to end phrases, single-note harmonizations, and different types of chords in fast combinations to create an abstract, challenging, and ambiguously multifaceted sense of composition.
1. Intro Like progressive rock bands of the previous decade, Morbid Angel use elongated and cryptographic song structures to repeat patterns occurring over a wide span of events. In the style of older witchcraft bands each motion in the song corresponds to an alteration in a vast world of ideas, and in that capacity can introduce a range of items corresponding to its structure and to the greater harmonic structure of each song. With respect to that mode of composition Morbid Angel acquit themselves brilliantly by extending the chromatic nihilism of a Deicide into a classical structural level.
Song tempos range from creeping decadent dirges of doom to rippingly fast infernal battles of blasting snare and riveting guitar riffing. Azagthoth's guitar establishes dominance from the beginning with an almost parasitic ability to manipulate the music around it, creating centerpieces of harmonic motion which overlay and resignify the rest of the song. Other individual performances are strong, from Commando Sandoval's endurance battering (a conglomeration of jazz and grindcore styles) to David Vincent's lucidly clear, strikingly savage and vividly distorted vocal to accompany his fearless of complexity bass playing, and the classical and lead contributions of second guitar Richard Brunelle.
Review: Morbid Angel rocked the death metal world with their first two albums, each revolutionary, the first from death metal, the second from the first. With most of the genre being at the non-virtuostic stage, Morbid Angel, with their characteristic oddball progressive bach rock approach, are extremely distinctive. Noone else creates music like this and nothing quite sounds like it - a tribute to the playing of Trey Azagthoth, a guitar genius in his own right, but also to the talent and musical prowess of the other bandmembers David Vincent on vocals and bass and Pete Sandoval ("the man with eight arms") on drums.
1. Rapture
This album almost continues the progression of the first, but isn't as daring as their second, Blessed Are the Sick (the first, Altars of Madness, is mostly straight-up death metal in the Morbid Angel signature style) although it is a strong and well-conceptualized theory of songwriting in its solidity and yet openness as demonstrated in these impressive works. If the first four tracks don't tear out your rectum, the rennovation of tone in doom metal of the final four will probably appeal ("dirge metal" is perhaps the best name for this style).
There are quite a few experiments, from the use of real sung vocals on "God of Emptiness" to the experimental guitar work of the first half of the album. The punch drops out of it toward the end, however, even to the instrumental, which is interesting but like many black metal experiments, lacks the punch of its metallic counterpart. Be wary, however, that the "happiest song in metal," Angel of Disease, is here after previously appearing only on "Abominations." While the power of conception and instrumentalism behind this work remains powerful, it is not as tangibly far ahead of the rest as its predecessor, but stands undefeated by time as excellent and satisfying death metal; highly recommended.
Review: A competent live album spanning Morbid Angel's career to date, "Entangled in Chaos" is a tribute to departing bassist/vocalist David Vincent as well as one of the few worthy metal live albums. The recording is excellent, clarity making it worthwhile to hear, and the song selection reasonably favors the more influential work of the band.
Tracklist:
1. Immortal Rites
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