While I disagree with Piles being better than anything on A-C. I am with you on Gateways. Imo their best album and my all time favorite death metal album.

I'd put it in my top 10 death metal albums of all time for sure. I don't think any of their other albums touch it. All the songs feel like they came from a weird alien planet.

A-C - all 90+ G is around there too, but come the fuck on liking Piles more than A-C!

I've been hit in the head a lot.

I'd put the song at least slightly over a couple on "Blessed..." for right now. The better songs on that album are bonafide classics, but there's others that still feel underdeveloped even today and make for a disjointed listen from front to back.

Speaking of which, I've never cared for all the extraneous stuff tacked on the ends of "Formulas..." and "Heretic." Either should've spaced them out, put them together into a more cohesive piece, or not bothered at all.

I hope we get another preview track before the album gets released, I wouldn't mind hearing the studio version of Paradigms Warped.

Agreed, and that's why I'm still on the fence about buying this. I'll need to hear at least one more good song, and Amazon needs to lower the absurd $16 they're asking for it.


Yes! Covenant, despite being right around the same length, is so much easier to listen to straight through.

Me neither. One of the advantages of the digital age is the ability to edit tracklists. Just delete everything from the end of Heretic and do this to FFF:


It's perfect this way!

Yes! I listened to heretic for the first time a few months ago. I was surprised at ho excellent I found the record. It gets bad publicity but I think parts of that has to do with the weirdness of the instrumentals at the end. Removing them and this has become one of my favourite Morbid Angel albums.

It's also the demo quality paper thin production job. But on the whole it's a decent album underneath it all. Just not one of their best.

Please, Morbid Angel, don't stop not giving a shit about what people think about your dungeon synth tracks, there are some here who actually like them.

The dungeon tracks are always cool but I think they don't put them in the correct places on the album, so to speak. Heretic had all them be cool, but weren't they kinda lumped next to each other?

What's the reference?

It's from Apocalypse Now.

Though the mess at the end of Heretic's CD is indeed a god awful cluster, I think it's more like schizoid said: the bizarre lo-fi prod it has. Heretic has always been one of my favourite MA offerings and that's partly because of the sound job. It's muddied and muffled, but I enjoy the unique atmosphere it gives the already mostly excellent songs. It sounds like something clawing up from muddy depths, and that just works for Morbid Angel.
But it's so different that of course it puts off or distracts a lot of listeners.

Wasn't there some promotional talk about the production of Heretic involving "weird and experimental" amp and mic setups, like using glass panels or something...?

+1.

Agree and disagree. The dungeon synth tracks are well done, for the most part. In the specific cases of F and H, I think they would be best served as interludes scattered throughout the track list rather than as clusters at the end-having them clustered like that does make them seem like throwaways.

And "Drum Check" is completely fucking stupid! They should've left that one for the bonus disc

Yeah, it was some kind of bandpass setup if I recall. I mean, he wanted a different guitar sound and he got it. I kinda think it fits Trey's more swarming tremolo style quite well.

I agree 200%, and I actually like Heretic a lot. Victorious March of Rain the Conqueror should have been the outro of the regular album.
The ambientish and instrumental tracks work best when they help the flow of the album instead of hindering it - for instance I think Hymn to a Gas Giant acts as a killer intro to Invocation of the Continual One, and Nar Mattaru plunges the listener into a dark, unsettling, fear-of-the-unknownish mood before the sludgy filth of God of Emptiness seals the album.

So I've given the promo copy a couple listens and it's a pretty decent album overall. If anything, the only real problem is that there aren't any wild guitar solos or ambient pieces that Azagthoth is known for. Most of the songs are pretty straightforward death metal and I think it may be one of the most "conventional" albums they've ever made.

That doesn't sound too bad at all, but I am dissapointed by the lack of ambient tracks.. I was really looking forward to hearing a few more on this one

Well that's a bummer and six-eighths.

i guess that was to be expected after the amount of hate they got for illud - now they're overcompensating and playing it completely safe

..or, they kicked out the one member who influenced them to go down the industrial direction in the first place, and are now playing what they really want to play...

Nah, Trey was very much on board with that direction. Vincent's two sole contributions were more reflective of the stuff he was into (mostly Rob Zombie-esque industrial hard rock), whereas Trey was more into hardcore techno. Tucker was probably like "dude, I get that you like this shit, but look, if it was going to work, you would have been able to make it work, let's get back to basics", and Trey listened to him.

I think David Vincent gets way too much shit for Illud, Trey was just as guilty and probably even more so.

On another note I heard the album yesterday and although I can't say too much it kicks massive ass. The mix isn't perfect cause the guitars are too silent but other than that I banged my head so hard to many of the songs.

The album has leaked.

The production seems a bit odd, but then again I just found a shitty rip online. Style wise it's as if Illud Divinum Insanus never happened - this sounds more like a continuation of the Tucker era stuff, unsurprisingly.

Boom.



Boom.



Boom.

Extremely salient points all around.

That said, I don't necessarily think doing a conventional/safe death metal album is a bad thing in of itself. F is my personal favorite MA album-and they'll likely never top it-so if it truly is in that style, then at worst this will be an enjoyable, familiar, somewhat nostalgic 50 minutes. Nothing wrong with that from time to time.

It's true that this will probably be a "safe" album, but I think this is definitely a case where that makes artistic sense and is preferable. After the last album, I personally would much rather hear Morbid Angel reclaim their identity and just be fucking Morbid Angel again - with straight forward & great death metal, than try and go off into another shallow, insincere "artistic experiment".

Just heard half of the album before I turned it off. Definitely a safe record - I fear this one will just get me in the mood to play Formulas or Gateways instead.

Illud was many things, but insincere is not one of them. The music accurately reflects their desires at the time of writing. I think they truly had faith in what they were writing; it was an honest experiment on Trey's part, while Dave was just writing music that was reflective of his actual tastes at the time. It was still an abortion, but it wasn't done in bad faith.

Thanks.



P.S: 160 kbps mp3 rip?!?

So I listened to it. A couple of the songs have that classic Morbid Angel sound & feel but overall it came across like a disjointed collection of riffs that don't really go anywhere. It gets a little bouncy/groovy at a couple points too which was weird. I will give it more spins but upon first listen it does not compare to A, B, F or G to me. The production is good and Steve's vocals are as good as ever though, so there's that.

It’s indeed a safe album for lack of a better term, but I think that’s all anyone could have realistically hoped for or expected. That’s pretty much what I wanted, really. Transitional albums can be a finicky thing, especially when we’re talking about a band as revered and influential as Morbid Angel coming back from easily one of the most head-scratching choices in the history of the genre, and the resulting lineup overhaul.

If we get something truly special in a few years, this is about as solid of a stepping stone as it gets and at least deserves that kind of acknowledgement. See also: “Surgical Steel,” “Cryptopsy,” and so forth. Yeah, they tick the boxes to a certain degree, but we’re shown they’re still capable of writing from what we identify as their respective creative cores.

That's it. Was someone expecting more?
P.S: I will NOT listen this shitty rip.

I already found a better one floating around on the music shelves of the Internets.

The album itself is good, I think. Yes, safe, and nothing special, but the songwriting is solid and even after one spin, some tracks managed to stick out ("Garden of Disdain" and "Architect and Iconoclast" in particular sounded really good to me). Will give it more time. Tucker sounds good, the drums are right up my alley, the solos are a bit sub-par upon first taste, but I'm fine with this. Mission accomplished: Morbid Angel are back on their feet again.

Trey Azagthoth on how his approach to "Kingdoms Disdained" is different from "Illud":



source: https://www.revolvermag.com/music/morbi ... eve-tucker

Just Say No campaign, exhibit A.

Has Trey ever not been a weird dude? To be fair, it's nothing if not one of the more creative ways I've seen or heard someone say "we're not having this discussion".