LP Review: "Kingdoms Disdained" by Morbid Angel

Kingdoms Disdained

It wasn't that long ago that Morbid Angel was touring Covenant again.

Sadly, that show...I missed it.

Morbid Angel was the first death metal band to really enter my purview. They were real death metal, not like Slayer.

Slayer was always touted as death metal by those out of the know. That was the introduction to my being a fan of extreme metal.

It's been 23 years since I bought it, but I can tell you the name of the store, where I got the money, and the location of where the store used to be.

It's a Qdoba now. Which is neither metal nor extreme. It's also safe to say that they have not purloined any metal fans into fans of their wanna be Mission Burritos. Though for a time, my death metal fandom waned, it has waxed again....

No photo at press time.

Needless to say, this blogger is a bit protective of Morbid Angel.

The albums without David Vincent, those happened when we weren't paying attention to the precious.

So...once again...history repeats itself doubly so.

Not only is Vincent once again out of the fold, but his original replacement, Steve Tucker, has once again replaced Vincent.

Pete Commando Sandoval left the group in 2010. Who was replaced by Tim Yeung, who was replaced by Scott Fuller.

So, the lineup that made that album that was so loved by me...is gone.

There's even another guitarist, Dan Vadim Von, who's assisting the lone member, Trey Azagthoth.

What makes a band that band really? For me, it's usually the guitarists anyway. So, it was easy for me to leave my nose turned in the proper position, besides, my classic lineup wasn't the original line up anyway.

It's pleasing to say that this album absolutely slays. Fuller's got a different style of drums than the aforementioned Sandoval. Certainly there are blast beats and thunder snares, but there's a better groove to the music which all starts behind the drums.

Morbid Angel's previous works never really inspired this sort of, well, conventional musicality. It's an improvement and an update, while still sounding like the same band.

Vincent's brand of vocals are gone to be replaced by the deeper tones of the once and again replacement, Tucker.

All in all, this is a tight record that had it hit me when Covenant did, it would be hard to say that things would have been different. They'd likely have been exactly the same.

Release: 12/1/17
Genre: Death Metal
Label: Silver Lining Music
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