Review Summary: Morbid Angel wash away the sins of the recent past by bringing back their traditional past.
It’s been 14 years since Morbid Angel released a full-on death metal album. Isn’t that crazy? Of course, there was
Illud Divinum Insanus in the meantime, but the bizarre industrial “experiments” (if you can even call them that) and laughable lyrics made for a frustrating experience for the fans. So, when I say “full-on death metal,” I’m talking about the work that became Morbid Angel’s signature sound over the years. Still, 14 years is a long time... and so is 6 years of bad press and ridicule. The prospect of making a new Morbid Angel album in 2017 would probably be a difficult move for the band members; would they continue experimenting and risk alienating the fanbase even further, or return to their roots and play it safe? Well, with Steve Tucker (previously on albums such as
Heretic and
Gateways to Annihilation) back in the fold, the band steadfastly clung to their roots and abandoned the
Illud sound altogether. Is this good or bad?
Well… it’s both, I suppose.
Make no mistake, though: the fury of Morbid Angel is back in full force. The rolling double bass and downtuned tremolo riffs of opener “Piles of Little Arms” immediately serve to set the tone the band are going for, and they rarely let up for the majority of the 47 minutes they’ve given us. With longtime bassist/vocalist David Vincent, guitarist Destructhor, and drummer Tim Yeung all out of the band now, the remaining trio are all able to frequently let their talents shine. Trey Azagthoth is as monstrous as ever, unleashing some of the most powerful and demented riffs of the band’s discography. The leads are incredibly busy and technical, and the tone in the slower riffing of “The Righteous Voice” and “Declaring New Law” is so muddy and ugly that it sounds like it was extracted straight from hell itself. Equally intense is Steve Tucker’s growling, which sounds halfway between death metal and deathgrind with its incredibly guttural texture. There isn’t much range to his voice on this album, but he still brings out its dark atmosphere with ease. The introduction of Annihilated drummer Scott Fuller was also a nice surprise, and his performances are actually quite reminiscent of the power and technicality Pete Sandoval used to bring to the table. He also has a number of progressive moments on the record, such as the technical grooves of the short-but-sweet highlight “D.E.A.D.” as well as the frequent tempo variations of stop-start chugfest “Garden of Disdain.”
The lyrics are also pretty interesting this time around, with a few more social and philosophical undercurrents here than usual. Of course the typical subjects of bloodshed and blasphemy make their way onto the record as well, but songs like “Paradigms Warped” and “The Pillars Crumbling” are much more thought-provoking in tone and subject matter. The latter, in particular, is a song detailing how people’s lives are often undone by their own hypocrisy and materialism, as well as using those traits to avoid who they are under the surface. Unfortunately, this kind of variety and freshness can’t always make up for the album’s biggest issue: how homogeneous it is.
Kingdoms Disdained may be a better record than
Illud Divinum Insanus, but I always had a weird respect for the latter’s (admittedly misguided) attempts at trying something different with their formula. About 90% of this album, for how good it is, is by-the-numbers death metal with very little variation in the core sound. On one hand, people may rejoice about it being closer to their classic sound and avoiding recent missteps. But on the other hand, it’s hard to forgive how boring some of the motifs are here. For instance, the simplistic chugging of the intro to “Paradigms Warped” could have used more sprucing up, like adding some extra technical leads on top to add some discord to the unconventional drumwork. Speaking of which, another intro that’s boring as hell is the one for “Declaring New Law.” I might have praised its guitar tone earlier, but the composition itself is bland and quite literally one-note. The production doesn’t do the album any favors either, sounding very muddled and murky. The worst offender of this is “Garden of Disdain”’s outro, whose doomy riff just sounds like a giant shapeless mass of sound with no real form to it. Oftentimes, it’s hard to make out what you’re even listening to.
I’m not
trying to find faults here, but I suppose I expected a bit more out of the album that was meant to drag us out of the pits of
Illud Divinum Insanus. As it stands,
Kingdoms Disdained is a good album. Not amazing, not terrible, just good. It’s better than its predecessor, yes, but it also has nothing on the band’s older material. There’s just too much bland, directionless songwriting and weak production for me to consider it an incredible return to form. As it is, though, it’s a
decent return to form. And hey, they did resurrect their traditional death metal sound. That’s a step in the right direction!
