Here's my 25th-anniversay tribute to my favorite metal album of all time. Paradoxically, this "41-minute blast of white-hot satanic rage" still fills me with immense joy. I'm not sure I've ever been so instantly frightened, awestruck and captivated by music as when I first heard "Rapture" on Headbanger's Ball back in 1993. (The eerily evocative video by Tony Kunewalder certainly played into that reaction.) This was some kind of new frontier of extremity that I had been searching for without even realizing it. I listened to the album twice through in recent days, and it has lost none of its savage majesty.
As I discuss in the piece, there is one line on the album that could be termed problematic, to say the least. The following is hopefully self-evident, but my praise of the album as an artistic statement should not be taken as a blanket endorsement of the perspective(s) that may have played into its creation. I take away from Covenant what I take away from most heavy music I love: an idea of pushing one's self toward some new threshold of intensity. Speaking strictly in those terms, I still haven't heard much else that can rival it.
I am unreasonably excited about the forthcoming Morbid Angel album, Illud Divinum Insanus, which comes out June 7 via the godly Season of Mist label. (Details here.)
When news first started circulating, well over two years ago, that Morbid Angel was beginning work on a new album with its classic-era frontman, David Vincent (he left the band in 1996, and from 1998 through 2003, M.A. made three albums with Steve Tucker in his place), I viewed it as a chance for one of my favorite bands to get back on track. The Illud song "Nevermore," which the band debuted live in 2008, seemed to herald a return to the classic sound of records like 1993's Covenant (definitively my favorite metal record ever) and 1995's Domination, i.e., grandly majestic and deeply rooted in the power of the riff. I celebrated "Nevermore" on this blog in February of 2009, and I see now that the record was originally supposed to emerge that year—yes, it's been a hell of a wait.
In that post, I wasn't kind to the three Steve Tucker–era M.A. efforts. I wrote: "…even after giving them each many, many chances, I still found them lifeless, boring and unmemorable." Suddenly, though, I find myself coming around. It's like I'm housecleaning in advance of Illud, and I'm appreciating old furniture I hadn't given a second look to in years. I've always had a hell of a time with personnel changes—I addressed that in this post re: my favorite band, craw—and I was severely bummed when Vincent left M.A. in the mid-’90s. I was even more bummed when the first Tucker-era disc, Formulas Fatal to the Flesh, emerged in 1998. It seemed that I was watching a band that had once towered over a genre like a colossus become mired in all of said genre's tired conventions, specifically an utter lack of dynamics and faceless, non-expressive vocals.
Over the past couple of days, though, I've really been coming around to Formulas, as well as the final Tucker effort, Heretic (2003). I can still hear why I had such a problem with this run of discs upon first exposure: The fact remains that the first four Morbid Angel albums (1989's Altars of Madness through 1995's Domination) are marvels of metal songcraft—savagely intense, fantastically diverse, improbably catchy. To some death-metal die-hards, M.A. in the first Vincent phase probably even got too accessible for comfort, specifically on Domination. But I always welcomed the coherence of those records as a respite from the directionless extremity that typifies extreme metal at its worst.
What I'm coming to understand now, though, is that Morbid guitarist/mastermind (and only constant member through the band's 27-year (!) existence) Trey Azagthoth (pictured above) deliberately scaled back the accessibility and the gloss on those records. Here he is discussing Formulas upon its ’98 release:
"Domination is a digital environment, it’s a metronome, a bunch of fancy things and singing and that which has nothing to do with anything I’m into, it is a very clear sound, a little too clean, maybe a little too industrial. All that has nothing to do with what I’m wanting to do. This album, Formulas Fatal to the Flesh has no metronome, very little digital stuff, the drums are proper, as far as their mics, it's not just a bunch of samples. A lot more overhead and ambient mics. A much more living feel as opposed to a mechanical feel, which I think Domination was."
Now rhetoric isn't everything of course, but I'm definitely starting to wake up to the raw extremity of Formulas. It's a crude, ugly, relentless record that trades the meticulous arrangements of early Morbid for chaotic aggression. When detours in tempo, texture and mood do occur, they're not fluid (as on Covenant songs such as "Sworn to the Black"); they're downright awkward and even baffling. Check out where "Invocation of the Continual One" goes at 1:35:
What in the hell, right? There's definitely some genericness swirling about in other sections of the song (I still can't get with the artificiality of those multitracked "demonic" vocals), but stuff like the 1:35 breakdown is really working for me. What I'm realizing is that though Morbid Angel did streamline in the Tucker years, they never turned their backs on the intoxicating, WTF peculiarity that has always made them so fascinating. Azagthoth is simply too weird a character to ever sound normal.
Heretic hit me similarly the other day. It definitely verges on monotony, but there's enough chaos and variety to keep me interested. Plus, it features one of Morbid's most purely anthemic songs, "Enshrined by Grace":
I can't get enough of that second riff (starting at :15 or so), in which a six-beat half-time bar alternates with ten-beat blast bar. Utterly sick stuff.
I still need to revisit the middle Tucker disc, 2000's Gateways to Annihilation, but overall, I feel like I've got a new, healthier (as corny as that sounds) perspective on the impending arrival of Illud Divinum Insanus. In short, I'm not loading it down with unfair baggage, expecting it to be this messianic thing, i.e., the record that Morbid Angel should have released in 1998, had Vincent not left the fold. Instead, I think I've come to terms with the fact that since Covenant, M.A. has always been a curveball band—they go out on limbs to a degree that can make you really uncomfortable. (Witness all the weird interludes and bonus tracks that mark both Formulas and Heretic.) Their experimentation hasn't always seemed fruitful to me, but I'm learning to be thankful simply for the band's sustained ability to surprise.
Moreover, there simply isn't going to be a return to the classic Morbid Angel that captured my imagination, simply because the band's longtime drummer, Pete Sandoval, is currently sidelined with back problems—young hotshot Tim Yeung is filling in for him on Illud. (At his best—Covenant!–Sandoval is a master of injecting his own kind of stiff, eccentric funkiness into death metal drumming.) Since Sandoval has appeared on every single Morbid full-length to date, I could go and brand his absence on Illud as blasphemous (ha, considering M.A.'s satanic proclivities), but I think I'm over all that now. That would be making the same mistake I made re: the Vincent/Tucker swap. I'll do my best to take what this band gives me at face value, not in comparison with what I was hoping or expecting to receive. The fact is that Trey Azagthoth is a true visionary, one of the greatest American artists working today, and he's never made a record that was anything less than extreme, passionate and deeply fucking surreal. Long live this man's madness, and for the love of satan, bring on Illud Divinum Insanus.
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. One solid reason to be grateful: the recent news that Morbid Angel has signed with the Season of Mist label (home to ridiculously good bands such as Cynic and Confessor). A new record - Morbid's first with founding frontman David Vincent since 1995 - is due in 2010. Can't wait. If you haven't heard it yet, here's "Nevermore," the fantastic preview track the band has been playing live for a while now, in a new pro-shot version.
P.S. Post-Vincent Morbid frontman Steve Tucker participated in a confounding yet cool metal happening at Santos Party House last weekend, conceived by Egyptian artist Nader Sadek and also including Mike Lerner (Behold...the Arctopus) and Flo Mounier (Cryptopsy). Read my review (w/ pics by Laal) here.
I'm sure everyone's got their own personal list of most-anticipated albums of '09, but there's really only one record I'm dying to check out, and that would be the forthcoming Morbid Angel LP. No street date is set, though the official site tells us this: "The band continue to work on the new album slated for a possible late 2009 release."
The real story here is that this record--which, in accordance with the band's alphabetical album-titling system, is almost certain to bear a name beginning with "I"--will be the first Morbid record since 1995's Domination to feature frontman David Vincent (at left). I know a lot of people were psyched on the first two Vincent-less MA records, Formulas Fatal to the Flesh (I know, right?!) and Gateways to Annihilation, but even after giving them each many, many chances, I still found them lifeless, boring and unmemorable. Morbid's 1986-1995 incarnation is one of the greatest RIFF bands in the history of metal and decently competent vocals (from Steve Tucker) aside, these later discs just didn't cut it in the songwriting department. None of the parts seemed to stick.
The outstanding news is that the band seems to be back on the ball. Morbid has been playing a song from the as-yet-untitled new record live, and it seems to actually measure up to the band's impossibly high early-to-mid-'90s standard. (Covenant *is* the best death-metal album ever made--probably the best that ever will be made. That's not up for debate, as far as I'm concerned. Domination isn't quite as blisteringly ferocious, but it's still a very fine and enduring effort.) There are a whole bunch of versions of "Nevermore" floating around; these five allow you to triangulate (that word isn't really valid when referring to more than three pieces of data, but you see what I mean) an extremely full and clear picture of what the track is all about:
[This first one--sorry, can't get the embed code to work--was officially endorsed by Morbid guitar wizard Trey Azagthoth, via his MySpace page.]
["You know, someone was askin' me the other day, 'So Vincent, what's goin' on with the new Morbid Angel album?'"]
[featuring Vincent's introduction of new Morbid guitarist Destructhor--also of Zyklon and 1349--and a really, really weird and nonsensical monologue about being a member of the "extreme elite," which I take to mean the Morbid Angel fan base]
[This one and the following vid feature phenomenally clear sound quality.]
Note the extremely catchy initial riff, which seems to come straight out of the Domination playbook, and the funny operatic vocal bridge, which nods to "God of Emptiness" and other grandiose Morbid breakdowns. A very sound--and in spots, fast as hell--composition that very naturally inhabits the classic Morbid vibe without trying too hard to ape it. It's as though the band is picking up right where it left off when Vincent departed after Domination, and completely ignoring the three interim albums, which is totally fine by me. (No songs from the non-Vincent records were played either time I saw Morbid live, in--I think--'05 and '06; again, totally cool by me.) Ol' Dave (or Evil D as he's called in his side gig with the Genitorturers, the S&M-metal band led by his wife--also apparently the project for which he forsook Morbid in the first place) looks pretty buffoonish these days with his pentagram-emblazoned nylon t-shirt and dyed-black hair (see above again), but musically, he's still got it happening. I cannot wait to hear what I really feel is going to be a return to form for one of the greatest metal bands of all time (and one of my personal favorite bands, period).
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In other classic-death-metal news, the unstoppable Cannibal Corpse has recently anted up with the respectably fearsome Evisceration Plague (the title track--actually one of my least-favorite songs on the record--is streaming here). It's no Kill--the downright unbelievable 2006 effort that completely blew my mind and thoroughly decimated my perception of the Corpse as a fun yet fairly workmanlike, unimaginative and technically mediocre death-metal band--but it's still a lean, badass effort. And in keeping with the recent Cannibal Corpse trend of issuing documentaries--I'll say it again: Centuries of Torment is supremely rad, a sentiment shared by the Times' Ben Ratliff--Evisceration Plague comes equipped with a highly entertaining making-of DVD. Could the Cannibal dudes be any more unassuming or fun to watch? I think not. (Fun fact: Like Kill, Evisceration Plague was produced by Mr. Erik Rutan, Morbid Angel's second guitarist--and a killer backup songwriter--during the Domination era.)
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Lastly, wish Hexa luck with their British tour, and read Calvin Tomkins awesome newish collection of profiles, Lives of the Artists.
