Released: May 2, 1991
Altars of Madness had already established how quickly Morbid Angel could move without losing control. Blessed Are the Sick takes on a more interesting problem: how could the band slow the music down without making it orderly?
Released by Earache in May 1991, the album was recorded and mixed at Morrisound Recording in Tampa. Morbid Angel produced it, with Tom Morris handling the engineering and mixing. David Vincent played bass and sang, Trey Azagthoth and Richard Brunelle handled the guitars, and Pete Sandoval remained the drummer capable of making almost any tempo sound unstable.
“Fall from Grace” gives the question an immediate answer. Its opening riff hangs on low, bent figures while Sandoval fills the gaps with active kick patterns and quick rolls around the kit. The guitars leave unusual amounts of room between changes, making every scrape and held note part of the rhythm. When the song accelerates, those spaces disappear and the riffs break into shorter, faster shapes. “Brainstorm” and “Day of Suffering” reverse the balance. Both are compact bursts where clipped riffs, blast beats, and abrupt transitions squeeze several ideas into a few minutes.
The title piece gives the slower writing its clearest shape. “Blessed Are the Sick / Leading the Rats” moves on a measured drum pattern and a low riff that keeps circling back before it fully resolves. Vincent has room to stretch his syllables and drop each line into the gaps. His bass closely follows the guitar movement, thickening the low end while adding a rough edge underneath the chords. Tom Morris’s mix keeps enough separation between the instruments for Sandoval’s kick drums to remain distinct without thinning out the guitars.
Vincent’s voice also benefits from that space. He growls deeply, but the words retain hard consonants and a clear rhythmic shape. His lyrics speak through commands and images of masters, fallen kingdoms, desecration, and spiritual revolt. On “Thy Kingdom Come” and “Unholy Blasphemies,” his lines lock tightly against the rapid guitar patterns. During the title song, the guitars open around him and allow the final words of each phrase to hang over the riff.
Azagthoth’s leads create another source of instability. His bends smear the pitch, runs spill across the bar lines, and many phrases end in squeals or sudden drop-offs. Brunelle brings his own phrasing to the guitar exchanges, most clearly during “The Ancient Ones.” That song stretches close to six minutes, moving through rapid sections, crawling riffs, and loose solo passages without settling into one dominant pattern.
Trey’s dedication to Mozart in the sleeve is easy to overstate. The classical influence shows up most clearly in how the album is arranged. The keyboard-based “Intro” and “Doomsday Celebration,” Brunelle’s acoustic arpeggios on “Desolate Ways,” and the closing keyboard chords of “In Remembrance” divide the record into distinct sections. Each one resets the ear and changes the entrance of the next song. Placing the bare acoustic guitar of “Desolate Ways” directly after the dense riffing of “Abominations” makes the return of the full band on “The Ancient Ones” sound even wider.
Three songs rooted in Morbid Angel’s shelved 1986 recordings also connect the album to the group’s earlier writing. “Unholy Blasphemies,” “Abominations” and the former “Azagthoth,” reworked as “The Ancient Ones,” deliver tighter execution and a broader range of tempos. “Unholy Blasphemies” delivers its ideas in just over two minutes, while “The Ancient Ones” spreads the older material across a long arrangement built around shifts in speed and lead-guitar exchanges.
So how did Morbid Angel slow down without becoming orderly? They stopped asking speed to do every job. Sandoval’s bursts still tear through “Brainstorm” and “Day of Suffering,” but the gaps inside “Fall from Grace,” the crawling title piece, the guitar exchanges in “The Ancient Ones” and the four instrumental passages keep the record unsettled at any tempo. Slowing down allows every bent note, drum subdivision, and vocal command to register before the next turn.
Written by Rob Joncas for DeadNoteMedia.
Artist information and music courtesy of the band.
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