Review Summary: Formulas Fatal to the Eardrums would've probably been a more fitting title for this.
What is exactly is death metal? A listen to Morbid Angel's debut album Altars of Madness will answer that question perfectly. After Death and Possessed planted the seed for the genre in the death metal breeding ground of Florida, Morbid Angel emerged and arguably established the modern definition of death metal. Trey Azagthoth's demented guitar soloing, Pete Sandoval's fast, blastbeat-infested drums, and David Vincent's gut-churning growls immediately became some of the defining characteristics of modern extreme metal. This was perfectly manifested on their aforementioned debut Altars of Madness, as well as Blessed Are the Sick and Covenant. The band's fourth release, Domination, was panned by many hardcore fans of the band, but remained fairly true to what the band had started. All history aside, the main point to be made is that Morbid Angel are definitely a band worthy of respect. The album we will be discussing, however, is not.
Let's take a quick journey back to 2011 and put ourselves in the position of a fan of Morbid Angel. The band has not released any new material since 2003's Heretic, a decent effort, but not the best to go out with. You have been dying of anticipation, longing for something, anything new for the band. You have been losing hope that anything is to come. That however, is all about to change. You've heard the news and you know that Morbid Angel are going to release a new album, but not just any new album. This album is to feature the long-awaited return of vocalist David Vincent, and the welcoming of drummer Tim Yeung, formerly of Nile and Divine Heresy. The album is shaping up to be amazing, and you continue to eagerly await it's release. Finally, after waiting for months and spending $15 of your hard-earned money, you lay your hands on a CD copy of this album. You get home from the store, and immediately bust open the packaging out of sheer excitement for what is to come. You turn up the volume on your stereo, turn on the bass booster, and load the CD into it. The music starts, and right then, it happens. All of your dreams are crushed, and you begin to regret everything in your life leading up to this point. You then turn the volume way down, as to not make the whole neighborhood suffer along with you.
I mentioned earlier that Altars of Madness is a great example of what death metal is. Illud Divinum Insanus is an even more perfect example of what death metal is NOT. Yes, I know you've probably heard this before, but this album is a Morbid Angel album that attempts to insert death metal elements into an industrial metal sound. Now, I know that may not sound too terrible at first, but allow me to share some of my experience with you all. When I first looked at other reviews for this album that described it as "death metal meets industrial metal," I actually gained a bit of interest in the album, despite those reviews being quite negative. I figured that if I were to listen to this album, I'd hear something like Fear Factory mixed with blastbeats and death growls. That would be AMAZING! What I'm trying to say is that my expectations were pretty high for this album going into it. Unfortunately, this album turned out sounding like a scrapped Al Jourgensen side project with headache-inducing production. And just like that, all my expectations went out the window.
The production, if it can even be called that, is terrible in every way imaginable. The guitar is the only thing that is even close to okay, when it can be heard. Trey Azagthoth is a great guitarist, no matter how you produce him, but it doesn't matter how good he is when you can't hear him for 99.9% of the album's almost hour-long runtime. The bass is also completely inaudible, being drowned out by the mess of industrial noise that carries this trainwreck. And then there are the drums. Let me explain it this way: the drums are to the ears what a play session on the Virtual Boy is to the eyes. If after reading all of this you still feel brave enough to listen to this album, it'd be wise to keep some Advil handy, because you're gonna need it. Basically, the drums are nothing more than loops of beats played by Tim Yeung looped over and over again and mixed in very poorly. So let's recap: the guitars are hardly more than noise, the bass is completely inaudible, and the drums require pain medicine to tolerate. It's a huge mess of noise that is not far from unlistenable. And this certainly isn't helped at all by the lyrics, which go from incoherent Spanish to very failed attempts to speak Latin. The name of the album itself is incorrect Latin, so don't get too excited about the lyrics. And don't even get me started on them trying to appeal to the scene kids. Even they aren't stupid enough to want to listen to this.
I know I've spent the last 4 paragraphs raving about how awful this disaster of an album is, but thankfully, there are a few hints of a good album sprinkled in here. They are so few and far between that they aren't really enough to make this album worth it, but they're there. On the rare occasions that you can hear Trey Azagthoth's guitar work, it's pretty good. It's certainly nothing new, but at least it helps this album retain it's death metal label. The songwriting is not completely terrible either, and I feel like had the drums and the production been better, some of the songs on this album could've been pretty good. David Vincent's vocals are good too, as they always are. There's plenty of variation in the songwriting, and musical skill is certainly present, but the flaws in its execution are what hold this album back.
Some people have tried to describe this album as "Morbid Angel's St. Anger," due to the terrible production and the band attempting to merge their traditional style with a very different genre of music. While I see this as a valid argument, I personally would say that this album is to Morbid Angel what Siren Charms was to In Flames. Sure, Siren Charms came out 3 years later and was far better than this album in every way, but it simply suffered from a less extreme version of what this album suffered from: a good idea lacking the right kind of execution. Siren Charms was a decent album, but having "In Flames" plastered all over it as a reminder of how amazing In Flames once was was what made it so hard to digest. The same situation is present here. The album is certainly bad, but not absolutely terrible. However, bearing the same name as the artists that made Altars of Madness and Blessed Are the Sick makes Illud Divinum Insanus a chore to listen to. I would definitely not recommend listening to this album, but I will also say that it isn't St. Anger level bad. Anyway, Illud Divinum Eatsanus gets a 2/5. Hopefully all of you can find a better use of 57 minutes than listening to this.
