Blessed Are the Sick

Morbid Angel’s Blessed Are The Sick was a landmark release in the history of metal. Released in May 22, 1991 Morbid Angel’s Blessed Are The Sick transformed death metal music from just an overly aggressive brother of thrash to a serious musical art form. It showed the metal world that death metal can be taken seriously as an art form. The first thing you notice on the album is the gorgeous artwork "Les Trésors de Satan" by Belgian painter Jean Delvile. Instead of the comically looking faces trapped in hell by Dan Seagrave on Altars of Madness we are presented with a much more serious portrait of the human condition just by looking at the cover art alone.

Instead of celebrating the powers of Satan that was demonstrated on Altars of Madness, Blessed’s concept deals with the celebration and rejoice of sins. Everything sinful that man commits such as lust, greed, selfishness Morbid Angel seeps in. Musically this album is far different than its predecessor. Everything has been stepped up quite a bit. The production has a stronger lower end, the drums sound thicker and fuller, and everything is more balanced sounding.

David Vincent is the most improved musician on the album. On altars he had more of a ghoulish rasp, while here he developed a monstrous roar which he credits to him quitting smoking. He also brings out the vocal style employed on altars on tracks like Brainstorm, Abominations, Ancient ones, and Thy kingdom Come. Most of the songs though employ the low end roar he developed over the past two years. Lyrically his subject matter has seen the most improvement. While on altars there were some comically hilarious lines such as

"Ghouls attack the Church
Crush the holy priest
turning the cross towards hell
writhe in Satan’s flames”

To a much more serious and more detailed descriptions of blasphemy and human sins as demonstrated on the song Abominations with some HP lovecraft thrown in

“Churning Sea of Absu; Place of weeping Death
Tiamat, dark serpent, Lord of the morbid Priest
Enraged with Hate for God, The Priests of Chaos chant
From the Book of the Worm, they burn the Symbols of Christ"

While Vincent’s lyrics became stronger and his vocals became more powerful his bass playing stayed the same he pretty much just plays in the background behind Richard Brunelle and Trey.

Azagthoth and Brunelle seriously stepped up in the guitar department on blessed. On Altars the soloing displayed was very chaotic and sloppy to an extent. While, here you cannot say the same. The soloing by Brunelle and Trey became far more cohesive and clear. They actually solo with melody on many of the songs and use much less effects on the guitar to solo relying more on actual playing of scales rather than heavy wah pedal use, or whammy bar abuse. The riffs became more balanced as well. The guitar riffs are often modeled on classical melodies, but delivered like a thunderbolt or an earthquake in finesse and precision. In the booklet Vincent states Mozart was his biggest influence on this album. On Altars most of the riffs are played extremely fast with constant tremolo picking, while here they utilize some doom metal riffs (See Fall from Grace and Day of Suffering intros) on top of playing the very fast tremolo picked passages.

Here the riffs might be slower than altars but they deliver more crushing force due to the production becoming better and the riffs carrying more weight than before. Sure this album doesn’t have guitars as crushing as Effigy of the Forgotten or Dawn of Possession but it is still heavier and better than majority of the death metal that came out in the early 90s. Morbid Angel went from playing a more extreme version of Slayer on Altars of Madness to finding their own musical identity on this album.

Pete Sandoval also grew as a drummer in the past two years. His rolls of the tom and snare became more frenzied and difficult to pull off. His fills and cymbal utilization helped in making this album his best drum performance. His blast beats aren’t too shabby either. Since altars his blast beats have actually gotten faster (see Brainstorm and Thy Kingdom Come). He also is able to utilize to the slower tempos in many of the songs to get really creative with his drumming. For example in Abominations he plays some off kilter snare hits but he is then able to return back to being in sync with the guitarists for when the chugging section shows itself.

All in all Morbid Angel grew as an entire band on this album. They went from energetic youngsters hopped up on Slayer and Kreator to a serious musical cohesive unit bent on destroying the world. A well-oiled machine shall we say that could play circles around most musicians with a very prideful stance among themselves (which is one of the lyrical themes on this album). You had Dave Vincent displaying impressive range with great verbose lyrics, the guitar players Trey Azagthoth and Richard Brunelle who really stepped up in the soloing and riff department, and Pete Sandoval who became more creative in his drumming. Morbid Angel has influence countless bands through this album and Altars such as Immolation, Hate Eternal, Nile, Immortal, and Behemoth and they still continue to influence metal bands all over the world. My suggestion is buy this album it is a definite classic in the metal world.