HISTORY
The death-metal genre was starting to get shape because of bands like
Slayer and
Venom and countless of other bands, these bands were more extreme in their music than the famous thrash-metal genre which was more aggressive. But the death-metal genre got its real shape when
Morbid Angel came to the world. Through the first wave of death-metal bands they were joined by bands like
Deicide for example, the band had a raw, heavy and fast aggressive music style that the world never heard of before. The vocals were very dark and growling, the drum work was fast and heavy and the guitars delivered shreds and solos of high-quality.
ALBUM INFORMATION
Morbid Angel delivered their first true death-metal landmark called
Altars Of Madness and then they released another album which was about to get the same attention as the first one. This time they released
Blessed Are The Sick in 1991, an album with intensive paces, machine-gun fast drum work, guitar work which was played with dexterity and the famous cookie-monster vocals. But the album had some small surprises and I you want to know what they were you better keep on reading.
THE BAND MEMBERS
This album was created by a group of four people and they were and some of them still are
David Vincent as the vocalist and bassist of the band,
Trey Azagthoth as guitarist and keyboard player,
Richard Burnelle as second guitarist and the drummer is called
Pete Sandoval.
The vocals in this album is pretty classic for the death-metal bands which was about to spawn after
Morbid Angel and
Death among others. The vocals are growling and aggressive dark singing, the vocals are though not so great because there is a slightly poor variety in them in my opinion. If there was some yell screaming and/or even darker growling it would’ve been a more interesting album. The bass is not so audible in this album which is a shame; the music is still very heavy in its sound but if you compare this with the early work of
Hypocrisy who had lots of
Morbid Angel influences this sound might seem a bit calmer in my opinion. The guitar work is great though, the guitars are shifting between raw shredding and even calm acoustics in some of the songs. The riffing is catchy most of the times, the guitars are very fast in pace but the riffing has not a big variety though. The guitar solos are excellent in this album, they are catchy, they have essence of evil, they sound quite technical and the structures are enjoying listening at. And then we have the drums, the drum patterns are also classic to the death-metal genre, most of the time the patterns are machine-gun fast. The drums deliver beats after beats, both catchy and non-catchy but the drums helps to build up the heavy sound.
MY POSITIVE THOUGHTS ABOUT THE ALBUM
I have always wondered how this band would sound like so I prepared myself for the worst but this was though very interesting. The things I liked about this album were the vocals to begin with, unique for the genre and for the band. Many old-school death-metal bands I have heard before had raspier and harsh vocals but this band had really evil and dark vocals, though I thought that some variety in the vocals would’ve been better but that’s just me. Another thing I thought was good was the huge contrast between some of the songs, you have songs like
The Ancient Ones which has heavy drumming, dark growls, catchy guitar work and great soloing. And then you suddenly have songs like
Desolate Ways which has very calm and melodic acoustics, though its just an instrumental song but it one example of the big contrasts found in this album. I never expected something like this and it was very good to have these kinds of contrasts in a death-metal album. The variety in the songs were also a good thing to me, the songs didn’t repeat the same pattern in all of the songs. Some songs were catchier than others but the song structures didn’t felt repetitive, most songs had their own special sound and structure which made the album more enjoyable.
MY NEGATIVE THOUGHTS ABOUT THIS ALBUM
I didn’t have so much to complain about this album, some small things I didn’t like was the vocals that I mentioned before. Though the vocals were unique for the band and genre but if there was more variety in the vocal work in might have sounded a bit more interesting, if
Vincent had experimented with his voice it would’ve been a plus but no. Another thing I didn’t like so much were the filler tracks, the only filler I enjoyed was
Desolate Ways but the others like the noisy intro track, the symphonic
Doomsday Celebration and keyboard based song called
In Remembrance felted just uninteresting. The last thing would’ve been the drum work; I enjoyed the drumming most of the times but it did was too much for me. The fast beats made the song itself a bit repetitive, most because of the single tracked drum patterns.
MY CONCLUSION
This was interesting, I might even check out more about this band because of this album. Maybe not my kind of death-metal but it got me hooked time to time, thanks to the albums variety among the songs, great guitar work and brutal sound this is an album that death-metal fans must own. Old-school death-metal fans might enjoy this more than melodic-death fans would, but it doesn’t matter, if you see this album buy it because this is one of the greatest death-metal albums to be recorded. I hoped that you enjoyed this review and if you have something to criticise just let me know.
RECOMMENDED TRACKS
• Thy Kingdome Come
• Unholy Blasphemies
• The Ancient Ones
• Desolate Ways
Maybe not one of my favourite bands or album but this was enjoying and the overall album rating will be: 4/5
