Illud Divinum Insanus - The Remixes

Morbid Angel's Illud Divinum Insanus had been a very controversial release because death metal fans of old date failed to connect with the band's unexpected industrial gothic rock sounds. This generous double-album consisting of thirty-nine tracks with a total running time of about three hours connects even further with the dark alternative scene. The featured guests for the remixes of Morbid Angel's preceding studio record might not be popular among metal fans but that's a whole different thing for gothics.

It features Slovenian avant-garde pioneers Laibach, German darkwave legends Project Pitchfork, Austrian electronic body music project Nachtmahr, Dutch darkcore and gabber disc jockey DJ Ruffneck, experimental French breakcore group Igorrr, Chris Pohl of German futurepop band BlutEngel, French aggrotech duo Tamtrum and American industrial metal band Combichrist to only name a few guests. As you can read, this diversified release offers entertainment varying from danceable electronic pop music over rhythmic industrial rock to aggressive core eruptions.

The record only has two obvious downsides. Among the thirty-nine tracks covering such diverse genres, there are obviously a few fillers here and there that might not please one particular listener while another one might exactly adore these cuts and rather reject the other listener's choices. That's not an unusual thing in the dark alternative scene. When you attend festivals such as Amphi Festival, M'era Luna and Wave-Gotik-Treffen, there are some folks that will be attracted to symphonic metal acts like Krypteria, Nightwish and Within Temptation while ignoring synth pop groups such as Depeche Mode, Kraftwerk and VNV Nation and for some folks, it's exactly the other way around. The great thing in the dark alternative scene however is that there is an intense sense of camaraderie despite such different tastes since the scene has more important elements in common such as philosophical concepts, individual freedom and appreciation of different forms of art varying from distinctive clothing over jewelry to paintings.

The only other downside is that the thirty-nine remixes are based upon only eleven songs from the preceding record. Despite the varied remixes, one eventually grows tired of listening to the twelfth version of ''I Am Morbid'' for instance. It would have been interesting to include remixes of other more experimental Morbid Angel songs from records such as Covenant or Heretic for example. The best idea to deal with an album of such epic proportions would be to choose your favourite ten to fifteen remixes and create your own sampler that you might actually enjoy for quite a while and listen to from start to finish without any interruptions.

Except for those two minor flaws, Morbid Angel's Illud Divinum Insanus - The Remixes is a dark alternative scene release that might surprise listeners in North America but that is actually much more common in Europe and especially in Germany. If you have grown up with connections to this scene like I have, you are genuinely going to appreciate numerous songs on this generous release. Metal fans might question the existence of this release in itself but the band probably aimed for increased popularity in the dark alternative scene. Sadly, this release didn't quite get the promotion it should have gotten to reach that goal among dark alternative scene magazines back in the days and the band shifted and changed quite a bit to return to its death metal roots that a majority of gothics find much too aggressive, bland and predictable. That's why it's ultimately understandable why this release might be considered the oddball in Morbid Angel's discography. If you however appreciate the dark alternative scene and haven't discovered this release yet, then let me recommend these thirty-nine timeless remixes that will provide much entertainment to you.

When it comes to most "bad" albums, I can generally understand their existence - for example: I can understand that Cold Lake was rushed, and that the guitarist on that album (whose name I neither remember nor care to look up) was in charge of the writing - if Tom G Warrior had been the main writer, then the album would probably be decent at worst. The same goes for Illud Divinum Insanus - the band wanted to try something different. However, it backfired on them. If they had stopped with the industrial elements there, I could forgive them. But, then the decided to do this.

If the fact that the single Nevermore featured a remix of one of the tracks from Illud Divinum Insanus wasn't a sign that Morbid Angel was pursuing this route, then this album should be a dead give away. Seriously, they might as well have had Rob Zombie do guest vocals on the original album - that would've been MUCH more interesting then this. Also, they missed out on getting Till Lindemann to produce this album - he might have made this an enjoyable experience.

Almost the entire disc sounds like rip-offs of terrible KMFDM demos - and I HATE KMFDM, so that's not a good thing. This is like a poor man's version of Ministry - not the Ministry from the 90s, 00s, and the current decade - no, I'm talking about the Ministry from the first 2 albums (when they were a synthpop/electronic band - and a good one at that). I feel bad making that comparison, since I feel that it's insulting to Ministry, but I must do it.

So, why am I not giving this a 0? Well...some of the songs are actually kind of catchy. Plus, the first remix is actually really good - I might have enjoyed the original album a lot more if the rest had been like that (it reminds me a lot of the intro to "Symphony of the Night" by Dragonforce, which is actually pretty good). And "OmniDead" is actually a decent remix - it's catchy as heck, and it has a very ominous vibe to it. It's a shame the rest of the album isn't like this. It's like watching a bad anime after seeing a really good trailer - so in other words, it's like the metal equivalent of Rail Wars (based on what a good friend of mine wrote in a review of it, anyway).