Hordes of Zombies is Terrorizer’s first release since the tragic passing of guitarist Jesse Pintado — but despite the loss, the band hasn’t missed a beat. Hordes of Zombies is an unrelenting, no-bullshit, no gimmicks, ugly, ugly, UGLY tumor of a death-grind album, the kind of release that reminds you why you ever got into the genre in the first place. If the music contained on Hordes of Zombies actually DOES wake the dead and induce them into a mad feeding frenzy, no one should be surprised. Pintado would be proud.

MetalSucks is thrilled to debut the title track from Hordes of Zombies, which you can stream below. We’re confident you’ll agree that it’s easily one of the most merciless releases of 2012 so far. The full album comes out on February 28 via Season of Mist; you can, and should, pre-order it here.

Terrorizer has premiered Morbid Angel’s video “Existo Vulgoré,” one of the less irritating songs off of the band’s disastrous Illud Divinum Insanus release. (I say “less irritating” because at least it doesn’t sound like a bad Marilyn Manson rip-off — it’s just not-particularly-noteworthy death metal.) The conceit is that the video is an old-timey silent film, only the conceit makes no sense, because there’s David Vincent singing along with the music — which, y’know, would never happen in a silent film.

Of course, there have been other metal videos made to look silent films, but I think those usually utilize the music only as a non-synch soundtrack, which I think is an acceptable cheat.

It’s also possible I’m just being too hard on Morbid Angel, although, in all fairness, they totally deserve it.

I keep telling myself I’m gonna do a review of Morbid Angel’s incredibly bad Illud Divinum Insanus-remix album, but the fucking thing is three hours long (!!!) and really, really hard to sit through… let alone sit through multiple times, as would be a requirement to write a proper review. I’ll keep trying, though.

-AR

There’s a fascinating psychology to a true failure of an album. And I’m not talking about how The Sound of White Noise pissed off Belladonna-Anthrax fans or whatever. No, I mean your St. Angers, Cold Lakes, your Unspoken Kings: albums whose defenders are more often than not defending just to be contrary. They’re usually made by bands with some renown and a fan base that — if not sizable — is devoted enough to know a blasphemously awful album when they hear it. There are so many points where the band’s handlers and/or hangers-on could have stopped them and said, “Wait, you’re not being SERIOUS about this, are you?” But either the band were so resolute in their belief that the album was a risk worth taking or were surrounded by a bunch of wincing Yes Men that it still comes into existence anyway, completely un-self-conscious and without a shred of self-awareness. There’s a beauty to those records, albeit a beauty that exists in terrible, regrettable art.

And although Morbid Angel haven’t been immune to Trey Azagthoth’s pretentiousness over the band’s multi-decade career, personally, I didn’t see an album like Illud Divinum Insanus coming down the pipe. Like Cold Lake and The Unspoken King – creative rock-bottom moments for Celtic Frost and Cryptopsy, respectively — it’s ill-calculated to an unfathomable degree. But unlike those albums, which on top of being terrible had a whiff of being sell-out moves (hair metal for Celtic Frost, mall-grade deathcore for Cryptopsy), Illud Divinum Insanus is a passion project for Azagthoth and Dave Vincent (back in the band for the first time on record since Domination). This is an incredibly personal record that they’ve decided to hang the Morbid Angel name on– a name that’s not just sacred in death metal but among the most respected in metal as a whole- – and have subsequently turned the band from a name synonymous with greatness to a name immediately followed with the statement “Just stick with their older stuff” if mentioning them to the uninitiated. Illud Divinum Insanus isn’t just terrible: it’s magnificently dreadful. If the last Six Feet Under album is a mentally ill guy holding a cardboard “REPENT” sign on the street, the new Morbid Angel record is that guy who cashed out his pension to buy ad space for the “THE WORLD IS ENDING ON MAY 21, 2011” hysteria.

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Before there were blogs there were these things called magazines, and the only metal magazine we still get excited about reading every month is Decibel. Here’s managing editor Andrew Bonazelli…

The only other time Decibel put Morbid Angel on the cover was our fifth issue, in March of 2005. David Vincent had just answered our dark prayers, returning to the fold to “focus on putting together a really brutal tour featuring classic Morbid Angel tracks.” That was radical enough, but what everybody was really rabid for was a new Vincent/Azagthoth collaboration, the first since ’95’s Domination. Predictably, Trey didn’t have much of a scoop for us: “We’re just taking this day by day. It takes so long to put an album together. I don’t think I’m at that point yet.”

Suffice it to say, it took him fucking long enough to get to that point. And in just under two weeks, if you’re not a metal journalist or friend of the band, you’ll finally get a thorough overview of what Tampa’s finest have been slaving away on: the deeply polarizing eighth album, Illud Divinum Insanus. And you’ll learn soon enough if your perspective mirrors the majority of those who have already heard it (mass facepalm) or if Azagthoth’s notorious experimental daring has paid off yet again. J. Bennett grills both principals and gets a pretty fascinating explanation for the startling new direction. It’s the big story in July’s dB, available in the webstore now, for subscribers within two weeks. This one doesn’t have a gushing Mars Volta review (sorry, J.), so it’s an improvement on multiple levels!

-AB

Decibel’s July 2011 issue also features Baroness, Coroner, Autopsy, Revocation, Wormrot, an incredible article about album packaging, and an awesome flexi disc of The Black Dahlia Murder covering Carcass’ “This Mortal Coil” with Jeff fucking Walker. That issue is available here, but why not get a full subscription to ensure you never miss one?

Hard to believe that there hasn’t been a new Morbid Angel album during the history of MetalSucks, but we’re finally getting one this summer. It’s called Illud Divinum Insanus, which, according to this dorky Latin message board (you really can find anything on the internet), a) means “that divine, insane thing,” and b) is poorly conjugated (apparently it should be insanum, not insanus). And I know that there are people who are bummed that Pete Sandoval doesn’t play on the album (the always-excellent Tim Yeung, finally freed from the constraints of Divine Heresy, has stepped in for Sandoval, who is still recovering from back surgery), but this the first album to feature David Vincent since Domination, so, y’know, ya take the good ya take the bad ya take ‘em both and there have the new Morbid Angel album.

ANYWAY, here’s the album artwork. I have almost no idea what the crap is going on, but I’m digging it anyway.

And here’s the art for the first single, “Nevermore,” which I actually think is even cooler than the album art. I guess “hands” are going to be a big theme here…

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To say that Max Cavalera put metal on the map isn’t exactly accurate; metal’s formative years dealt with pond-crossing pollination between Europe and the U.S. But Sepultura helped bring the idea that metal was a global entity into being, from their early death metal albums, proving them more than competen,t to their later thrash/groove metal records, which combined primal heaviness with South American instrumentation. Max has continued this in Soulfly, which, despite  hisliving in the U.S. for the last decade and a half, still includes bits of his heritage. Though Sabbath, Priest, Maiden, and so forth may have (unintentionally) presented metal as a mainly Anglo-Saxon phenomenon, Sepultura proved that if metal were going to be adored worldwide, it would be made worldwide as well. Their far-reaching success (both in the form of Max Cavalera’s Soulfly and the current incarnation of Sepultura) cements their very important place in metal.

Despite being in the game for more than twenty-five years, Max hasn’t shown any sign of slowing down. He founded Cavalera Conspiracy with his formerly estranged brother/ex-Sepultura drummer Igor; Soulfly’s recently-released Omen shows the same strength, vitality, and palatable riffs that the band has always been known for; and he’ll no doubt be hitting the road for the foreseeable future. In an interview with MetalSucks conducted shortly before the album’s release, Max talks about making Omen, discusses how he manages to rope in guest performers, and makes some lofty claims about the upcoming Cavalera Conspiracy album.

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I don’t want to ruin it for you, but this 1989 interview with Morbid Angel’s David Vincent includes the above gem of a question and some of the following:

“What do you think of microwave ovens?”

“Do you often see Monkeys in Florida?”

“What do you think of the new Goo Goo Dolls LP?”

Priceless! Thanks to “Andrewlol” for sending this in.

-VN

In no particular order…

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Thanks to Cosmo Lee at Invisible Oranges for pointing out that today marks the 20th anniversary of the release of Morbid Angel’s historic debut, Altars of Madness. As Lee notes, “Morbid Angel weren’t kings of death metal yet. Altars of Madness was the beginning of their coup.” My personal favorite Angel album, Domination, was still six years away. But it’s impossible to ignore the importance of this release to the death metal genre.

After the jump, watch nine out of the ten songs on the record, as filmed for the Live Madness ’89 concert film that captures the band performing just months after the album’s release. Live Madness is also available as a DVD that was included Altars‘ 2006 re-release.

-AR

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