MORBID ANGEL — Heretic (review)

MORBID ANGEL — Heretic album cover Album · 2003 · Death Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
3/5 ·
UMUR
"Heretic" is the seventh full-length studio album by US, Florida based death metal act Morbid Angel. The album was released through Earache Records in September 2003. It´s the successor to "Gateways to Annihilation" from 2000 and features one lineup change since the predecessor as guitarist Erik Rutan once again jumped ship, leaving Morbid Angel a three-piece consisting of Steve Tucker (Lead vocals, bass), Trey Azagthoth (guitars), and Pete Sandoval (drums).

Morbid Angel have always been boundary seeking, unconventional, and adventurous in their approach to writing and playing death metal, and the material on "Heretic" continues down that road. The tracks are generally challenging on the ears, featuring complex structures, frequent rhythm changes, avant gardish guitar solos, and unconventional chords and harmonies (dissonances). Tucker has a commanding growling delivery, but occasionally also performs higher pitched snarling vocals. The latter vocal style is heard on a track like "Stricken Arise".

"Heretic" is an oddly constructed album as it features no less than 44 tracks. Most of them are short silent tracks (from track 15 and onwards), but there are some longer ambient tracks among the closing tracks of the album. Neither the silent tracks nor the longer ambient tracks do anything good for the album. The decision to place the two ambient instrumental tracks "Place of Many Deaths" and "Abyssous" as track number 7 and 8 also feels a bit wrong as they end up disrupting the flow of the album. The "regular" death metal tracks on the album may be original in sound and style, and highly adventuruos in nature, but there is a serious lack of catchiness and memorable moments throughout the album. "Stricken Arise" is the only track on the album, which sounds just a little like the first four albums by Morbid Angel (which are arguably their most lauded and memorable releases), as it features a fast-paced blasting rhythm and hook laden vocal parts, but the remaining tracks are a rather difficult and uninviting listen.

This is the sound of a band who now make music only for themselves and who have more or less forgotten about their fans. They toy with rhythms, timbres, structures, and dissonance, in a way that is probably rewarding for the musicians involved, but not that interesting for death metal fans who crave brutality and aggression from their listening experience. Personally I find this more intellectually rewarding (as a musician) than pleasing on the ears. As an album "Heretic" lacks attitude, passion, and hooks, and while it´s not as such a bad quality release, I can´t give more than a 3 star (60%) rating.
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