This is one of those albums that you have to be immersed in the metal underground, or at least know someone who is, in order to have heard about. Morbid Saint released only one album and it is long since out of print. Finding this album in physical format is very difficult. When it shows up on ebay, it typically sells for around $50.00 or more. That's very expensive for an album. Thus it is that this is one of the very few albums in my collection that I had to download and burn onto a CD. I am not proud of that, I have a fundamental issue with not owning a physical copy of the album. But I digress.The reason that this album is so expensive when it shows up is the very simple relationship between supply and demand. There are very few copies out there and a lot of people want one. The reason it is in so much demand is the fact that this is quite frankly one of the greatest brutal thrash metal albums ever.
The music is lightning fast with heavy riffs that straddle the border line between thrash and death metal. Frequent guitar solos liven things up even more. The vocals are kind of a cross between thrash metal screams and death metal growls as well. Most of the songs are short, although there are a couple of seven minute songs present. But even the long songs hold the listener's interest.
This album features some of the most relentless, brutal assaults on the ears I have heard in thrash metal. Every song should be hailed as a classic. This is truly an amazing album. And yet, very few people even know it exists. Such a shame.
That's funny. I buy MP3 albums almost exclusively. I burn about 1/4-1/3 of them to CD to listen to in my car, and listen to the rest at work on my iPod. I stopped browsing through the CD booklets a while before I stopped buying CDs, so I'm not really losing out on anything. I am slightly leery about the fact I don't get a permanent hard copy, but I try to back up my music to an external hard drive regularly. Speaking of which, I'm probably about due.
ReplyDeleteThe other thing that's funny is that cover art. I almost lost it when I saw that. Hilarious!
But with this kind of praise, I may have to look into that one.
Yeah, the cover is interesting to say the least.
ReplyDeleteI'm kind of a purist when it comes to my music collection. In the last few years, I have been working on building a decent record collection.
It sounds like these guys are back together and playing shows, and the album was reissued (with a less silly cover) last year. It is, nonetheless, out of stock at Amazon and Relapse.
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