Altars of Madness
| Altars of Madness | ||||
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| Studio album by Morbid Angel | ||||
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Publication |
1989 (Europe), 1990 (USA) |
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| Label (s) | Earache Records | |||
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Format (s) |
MC, LP, CD |
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Title (number) |
9 |
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running time |
34 min 59 s |
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| occupation |
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Digby Pearson |
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Studio (s) |
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Altars of Madness is the debut album by the American death metal band Morbid Angel .
History of origin
Morbid Angel had 1986 Embryonic Goreque Records, the independent label of them befriended David Vincent , Abominations of Desolation added, originally as a debut album should appear. However, guitarist and main songwriter Trey Azagthoth was so upset by the result that he fired all band members except for the second guitarist Richard Brunelle and suspended the release of the album. David Vincent, who had recognized the potential of the band, invited Azagthoth and Brunelle to Charlotte (North Carolina) to continue Morbid Angel with his participation and with his friend, drummer Wayne Hartzel. In the following years the band played countless shows and refined their style, which was getting harder and faster and enriched with blast beats. When the band moved to Daytona Beach in 1988, drummer Wayne Hartzel disappeared. While looking for a new drummer, David Vincent became aware of Pete Sandoval from Terrorizer . Sandoval, who lived in Los Angeles , sold his car and relocated to Florida.
The band was now increasingly looking for a record label that would bring out their debut album. For most labels, however, the music was too extreme, which is why they rejected the band. It was recommended that the band play slower and more melodic and, in particular, change their name. A label wrote to Vincent:
"After listening to your tape, all we can say is that you do for music what King Herod did for babysitting."
"After we've heard your band, all we can say is that you mean to music what King Herod meant to babysitting"
In the summer of 1989 Mick Harris of Napalm Death was vacationing in Florida and also visited Morbid Angel and was so enthusiastic about them that he played their tapes Digby Pearson from Earache Records . Due to Harris' intercession, Pearson eventually signed the band.
Music and lyrics
The music was extremely fast and complex. The use of 3/4 time was unusual because all the other extremely fast bands, especially those from Grindcore , used 4/4 time. As material, some tracks from Abominations of Desolation were used in post-processed form ( Chapel of Ghouls , Welcome to Hell under the new title Evil Spells , and on the CD release Lord of All Fevers and Plague ), the other pieces were written by the Duo Azagthoth / Vincent new. An essential factor for the hardness of the music is drummer Sandoval, who originally came from grindcore and had to learn the required double bass technique within two and a half months. Azagthoth and Brunelle had only worked out the basic ideas for the striking guitar solos; there was no time for a detailed composition. That is why, in Trey Azagthoth's view, the solos sometimes lack the necessary flow and, in retrospect, he called them atonal and sometimes horrific.
Most of the texts were written by David Vincent and are inspired by HP Lovecraft's Cthulhu myth and the Necronomicon . According to Azagthoth, some texts simply tell a story, others are to be understood as an occult ritual .
Recordings
The band decided to record the album in the Morrisound studio in Tampa because the studio had an excellent reputation and was considered the most competent in death metal. The recordings were the best time of his life for Brunelle, but Pete Sandoval had never worked in a professional studio before. Digby Pearson is mentioned in the credits as producer, but actually wasn't, because Morbid Angel actually produced the album himself. However, Pearson was always present during the recording and gave advice, which is why David Vincent called him executive producer .
Cover design
The record cover was designed by Dan Seagrave , an 18-year-old underground artist from Nottingham who had already designed several covers for Earache. It shows a swirling globe with many different faces that are supposed to represent millions of different personalities. The band hadn't seen the cover before. When David Vincent flew to England to hand over the master tapes to the record company , Seagrave introduced him to several motifs, including: a. also this. Vincent saw it and knew he wanted this cover.
publication
The album was initially released in Europe in late 1989 as LP , Picture Disc and MC with nine tracks. In addition, a version limited to 2000 copies was released in colored vinyl. A little later, the label released a CD which, in addition to the bonus track Lord of All Fevers & Plague , contained newly mixed versions of Maze of Torment , Chapel of Ghouls and Blasphemy in addition to the album versions . Digby Pearson had the idea for this because he wanted to create an additional incentive to buy the CDs, which were still comparatively expensive at the time.
On December 7, 1990, around a year later, it was published in the USA. The reason was the contract with the American distributor Combat Records, which provided for the release of the Earache albums in a package. For this purpose, the publications in question for a nine-month period were combined into a package and pressed and distributed within a further three months. In the USA alone, the first edition is said to have been around 30,000 copies.
The album was re-released several times by Earache. In 2002, a remastered CD version was released, which included the promotional video for Immortal Rites as a bonus . In 2006 a dual disc was released that contained the complete album on the CD side and a live recording from November 14, 1989 on the DVD side.
reception
Wolfgang Schäfer from Rock Hard compared Altars of Madness in a contemporary review with Seven Churches from Possessed , whereby Morbid Angel has not yet reached its class. In addition, the ideology presented in the lyrics, in which the musicians seriously believed, is "absolutely nonsensical". In retrospect, however, according to his colleague Holger Stratmann, the album is a milestone in Death Metal thanks to the "inimitably fast drumming, the distorted, excellent guitar riffs, the original compositions and the deep, rough vocals [...]." Jason Birchmeier of Allmusic writes that the band set new standards for extreme metal with the album at the time, although according to today's understanding it could not keep up with the later releases of Morbid Angel in terms of sound quality or creativity. The online magazine powermetal.de describes Altars of Madness as an album "which is traded as an epochal masterpiece of the genre in every respect and which rightly has its place in the death metal halls of fame".
Track list
- Immortal Rites (Text: Vincent / Music: Azagthoth)
- Suffocation (Text: Vincent / Music: Azagthoth, Vincent)
- Visions from the Dark Side (Text: Vincent / Music: Azagthoth, Vincent)
- Maze of Torment (Text: Vincent / Music: Azagthoth)
- Chapel of Ghouls (Text: Azagthoth, Browning / Music: Azagthoth)
- Bleed for the Devil (Text / Music: Azagthoth)
- Damnation (Text: Vincent / Music: Azagthoth, Vincent)
- Blasphemy (Text / Music: Azagthoth)
- Evil Spells (Text / Music: Azagthoth)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Albert Mudrian: Choosing Death: The Incredible Story of Death Metal & Grindcore . IP Verlag, Berlin 2006, ISBN 978-3-931624-35-4 , pp. 67 .
- ↑ cf. Mudrian 2006, p. 71.
- ↑ cf. Mudrian 2006, p. 128f.
- ↑ cf. Mudrian 2006, p. 146.
- ↑ cf. Mudrian 2006, p. 147.
- ^ Wolfgang Schäfer: Altars of Madness Review. Rock Hard # 35, accessed October 18, 2009 .
- ↑ Holger Stratmann (Ed.): RockHard Encyclopedia . RockHard-Verlag, Dortmund 1998, ISBN 3-9805171-0-1 , p. 259 .
- ↑ Jason Birchmeier: Altars of Madness Review. allmusic.com, accessed October 18, 2009 .
- ^ Rüdiger Stehle: Altars of Madness Review. powermetal.de, accessed on October 18, 2009 .
swell
- J. Bennett: Immortal Rights. The Making of Morbid Angel's 'Altars of Madness' . In: Albert Mudrian (Ed.): Precious Metal. Decibel presents the Stories Behind 25 Extreme Metal Masterpieces . Da Capo Press, 2009, ISBN 978-0-306-81806-6 , pp. 85-95 .