Morbid Angel – Blessed Are The Sick

The vinyl reissues (I have almost all of them!) are also good but this first release has a unique sound that makes this album special.
When I was 16 I even bought three copies because I was afraid in case of ruin of not finding it anymore ...
One of my favorites in the death genre but with the first 4 works of Morbid Angel you are not wrong (I started from "Altars of Madness" onwards)
Probably "Altars of madness" remains the best of the MA, it is certainly more immediate and "dirty" at the production level and it is also probably the best debut album in the history of death metal (IMHO)
"Blessed are the sick" and "Covenant" remain two must-have masterpieces together with "Domination", the latest great MA album

Dude... what happened to that signed copy, sold for >1000,- bucks a few months ago and hyping the ass off that record... ???

This album is one of the best death metal albums ever. This is the innovator for the new (90's) death metal standards with clear sound production, brilliant compositions, perfect performing, true lyrics & photo stuff on printed inner sleeve. A classic pure Florida's sound.

However, I still insist that the most "morbid" album is ALTARS OF MADNESS.

MORBID ANGEL. A megatherion for USA's extreme metal music. RESPECT!

As a rebuttal to the critical review from md. From a personal perspective, this was one of the first death metal albums that I was exposed to as a teenager in the mid 90's and set the benchmark for me in terms of intensity, coherent yet dynamic song structures, memorable and unique riffs, unbridled solos that mix chillingly melodic phrasing with mind-boggling fingerboard acrobatics and harmonic squeals from hell, authoritative supporting bass and fierce delivery of catchy death growls with clarity and character. This is a very strong album and a flagship for the genre and metal in general. Fall from Grace is one of the best death metal tracks ever written IMHO.

Why Altars of Madness gets all the praise seems to me a production issue more than anything. Blessed is very clean in comparison, it lacks the rawness of recordings done on lower budgets, but on the flipside the clarity and stereo imaging is outstanding. And this original vinyl pressing is an absolute stonker. When I first spun it on my system, I was blown away. After years of listening on cassette as a youth, it never sounded so rich and full.

Vincent's vocals are quite forward in the mix, he infects you with his chants like a man possessed lunging out of the speakers. Is it too loud? Maybe, but I like it just how it is. The drum sound is the weakest point, with the toms sounding particularly "tubby" and too much reverb, but Pete Sandavol's flawless execution of his brilliant lines eclipses any shortcomings in the production values.

Regarding the critique of the songwriting itself. md is probably unaware of the history behind the releases of the first few albums. Many of the songs were written several years prior - FOUR SONGS to be precise. Morbid's first album, Abominations of Desolations (1986), was stopped by the band being released initially because they were so unhappy with the production. 3 songs from that album we re-recorded and released on Blessed. They also re-recorded another 4 tracks from Abominations on Altars (Chapel of Ghouls, Lord of All Fevers and Plague), Covenant (Angel of Disease) and even Formulas (Hellspawn). The latter album takes eclipsed their early efforts. So you see, Morbid were just doing the original tracks justice.

md cites "Thy Kingdom Come" as being a rehashed vocal - not exactly true, this was written in 1987 and released as a demo, and therefore it pre-dates Maze of Torment.

The history behind songwriting is not just a matter of release dates, this is one thing that people seem to forget when judging who did what first, and who copied who. Many artists sit on ideas and songs for years before officially released, there are no hard and fast rules about this.

Somewhat hyped up by Morbid Angel on their own website, this is nevertheless genuinely considered to be something of a classic in death metal history. I bought it shortly before making a sudden and swift transition from listening mostly to brutal guitar based music to hypnotic electronic music, and at the time never really listened to it. 10 years later, retrieving it along with other old metal stuff from a box back at my mum's house, I sold it along with a few other releases that didn't hold significant memories for me.

Some years later still, I've now revisited the album. It has, as stated on the band's website, "retained the venomous energy of its predecessor" - the excellent "Altars Of Madness". The highly effective Morbid Angel technique of layering furiously fast drums over (what seems like) slower, grinding guitars is here in abundance, creating a veritable onslaught of sound that evokes visions of dark armies marching. Here too are plenty of the wild, frenetic guitar leads that come from nowhere and end in the same place. The improved clarity in the production does the music plenty of favours, especially for the bass guitar. Although I remember being disappointed that David Vincent's vocals appeared to have dropped an octave (do growls have octaves?) when I first heard it, my better trained ears can now hear that it was more something missing in the mix of "Altars..." rather than something that had happened to his larynx between albums.

All that said, I can't help feeling this album and its reputation is something of a fraud. It's a collection of recycled ideas – to the point of actually having riffs and progressions I clearly recognise from other releases, from M.A. and others. Most shocking of all is a repeated verse in "Thy Kingdom Come", where Vincent's vocals match exactly the form and rhythm of a verse from "Maze Of Torment" on "Altars...".

It's a fairly unusual rhythm so it stands out clearly, and it's so similar I wonder why they didn't spot it and think "hey, we've done this before haven't we?". Then again, that's a question that should have been ask often, and long ago, in the sadly stuck-in-a-rut world of death metal. Like so many bands it seems Morbid Angel's most highly praised album is lacking the originality of their earlier work.