Covenant is my favorite and I can never understand why some people don't like Sworn to the Black. That's one of my favorite songs. The riffs are catchy and powerful. Trey does his best Eddie Van Halen inspired solo on that song in my opinion. 10 out of 10.
Domination is actually my second fav behind behind Alters. I got to meet them at a signing during a FFttF tour. Trey was really cool. Pete and Steve didn’t really seem like they wanted to be there. But it was cool
I would probably swap blessed and covenant and that would be my list. Your opinions on covenant are basically my opinions on blessed haha. Good video mate.
I love "Illud Divinum Insanus". Love it! Blades is one of the coolest Death Metal songs, Too Extreme a archetypal Tekkno Death song and there is a great variety among the rest. I also think it is totally ok for Morbid Angel to release such a atypical album, the previous albums are always around, so no need to bitch about them doing something different.
Glad to see there are people who enjoy it. For me, it wasn't so much that they did something different, it was just that the execution didn't work. The songs and riffs generally don't engage me, the vocals and lyrics are often cringy, and the whole album just lacks the sense of twisted evil that many of their best albums have. I would have loved for them to release an industrial death metal album that I actually enjoyed. Illud just wasn't it.
Dude. I enjoy your style of analysis. While my ranking differs for personal and nostalgic reasons, you said a lot of things I've always thought about these albums. I'll be watching your content again!
After seeing your vid on new wave of death metal bands ranked, and you ranking tomb mold and gatecreeper ABOVE Blood Incantation and Skeletal Remains I HAD to come see your Morbid Angel rank 😄🤣 👍 🙏🙏🙏🙏
Thank you! I'm jealous - I've been wanting to see Destruktor live for years. Still kicking myself for not catching them when they played in the US at Hells Headbash 2 back in 2015. They are criminally underrated!
15:57. My favorite instrumental on Heretic is "place of many deaths". Just my opinion here, but like Trey, I struggled with heroin for a long time. The nature of heroin addiction is one of experiencing the highest heavens and lowest hells back to back from one another... absolute peace and surrender existing in the same time and space as total suffering and death and chaos. So this album's "bi-polar" nature, seems to me, to be an expression of these two states of experience, as likely had by Trey (and Pete, but not sure if Steve ever 'played with the needle'). Notice the cover art, it supports my theoretical interpretation of dualistic nature that Morbid Angel is conveying.
honestly i feel like covenant should be a little higher. they signed to a major label and made sure that instead of selling out, they cranked it up to 11. totally worthy of respect.
I respect them for not releasing something more mainstream-influenced with Covenant for sure. At the end of the day I just enjoy Formulas, Altars, and Blessed more overall.
@@metalvibez Covenant wasn't that mainstream influenced .Domination ,on the other hand was indeed mainstream influenced but still a great album in my opinion.
Illud is great in my opinion, I never saw or read any of the criticisms until much later and totally blindsided me, because the death metal songs are tight and fast. The experimental tracks didn’t surprise me since Morbid was always experimenting with weird stuff. Much more memorable than Kingdoms.
Pretty good ranking but I'd have Heretic higher if it had some mastering work done and Formulas up top. On a completely unrelated note I went to high school with Jahred from Destruktor. Very cool dude.
That's one of the things I love about Morbid Angel - a lot of their albums are pretty different from each other, so you see different rankings all the time. There's a lot of good discussion to be had about which of their albums are better than others.
The only Morbid Angel albums i continuously go back to are Abominations, Altars, Blessed, and Formulas. My ranking today would go as follows: 1. Abominations 2. Formulas 3. Altars 4. Blessed 5. Gateways 6. Covenant 7. Heretic 8. Domination 9. Kingdoms 10. Illud
Tip of the proverbial hat to you for putting Abominations at the top. I love me some Altars, but Abominations has that unpolished, Mike Browning-y evil sound.
Damn good job man I can tell your a super fan. I like the way you describe each song on every album. Hopefully the new album is a return to form. Suppose to come out this year sometime from what I heard. We'll see.
This was pretty good IMO. Of course it comes down to personal taste and sometimes nostalgia gets in the way. F was the first MA album that I enjoyed during release year, I even bought a cassette tape and blasted it non stop for years. I've always loved C and A, but F has it all: insane riffs and solos, the drumming is Sandoval's most aggressive and bombastic take IMO and Tucker's vocals really add a new dimension to the band. G was a dissapoint since I was still hyped about F, so I wouldn't rank it before D. H has some cool songs but that's it. B is unique, but it doesn't get my blood flowing like C or F jajaja Anyway, did you know that the song Invocation of the continual one is actually called "Morbid Angel", it was written back in like '85 and it's featured in a live bootleg titled "Morbid Angel's 3rd gig"?
I didn't know that - that's pretty cool. If that song had actually received a proper studio recording and release in '85 it would have been insane. Off the top of my head I can't think of anything else in the metal scene that would have sounded like that at the time.
@@metalvibez you can check it out, I guess someone ripped it and uploaded it to RU-vid already. If not, I'm tempted to do it myself, as I have the vinyl myself hehe The quality is horrible as you might expect. But since you already know the song, it's easy to follow along. It was back when Mike Browning was drumming and singing at the same time, so you can imagine how raw and bad it sounds. But it's a piece of history nonetheless
@@metalvibez couldn't agree more, hard to imagine topping what they've done so far but they're def capable of it. What bands would you recommend along similar lines? More obscure, underground.
I aim to have all 6 of the ‘classic’ albums on vinyl, I have Altars and BATS currently. I’m looking forward to finally seeing Morbid Angel live next month, even though it’s not my favorite lineup. Much like Hobbsacation it’s as close as I can get to the original experience.
Your tier list is very similar to mine. The only difference would be that I'd put Covenant and FFtF on the highest tier as well. Matter of fact (and I know it's considered blasphemy), my favorite album is Formulas. I was pretty disappointed with Domination for the exact reasons you say (apart from that I love Hatework) and Formulas just made up for that and then some. All three of the guys brought their absolute a-game, I think, in writing and execution. Gateways was okay but it made me realise I just don't really like Eric Rutans writing. No disrespect, the guy is a legend, but I never got into any of his bands. I bought Heretic blind and played it a grand total of three times. It had no hooks for me. Love me some weird twisted death metal but this just didn't work for me, also because of the silly production. The good thing about Heretic though, was that I had already said my goodbyes when Ilud came out, so that was no skin off my back. Back around FFtF Trey and I corresponded quite a bit (with my very first e-mail address) and he was a super nice and interesting guy. Deeply into this sorta selfhelp/magic intersection (he was a huge fan of that Anthony Robins guys stuff), he was very passionate about explaining his ideas and how he worked that in his music. That also contributed to my love for FFtF. He really created something magical there, in my opinion. Thanks for the video! Keep the metal flowing!
Re: Illud - I actually instantly liked it on it's appearance, never understood the hate (aside from radikult, yes, it shouldn't exist), though have cooled to it now somewhat.
I'll come to its defense. Illud Divinum Insanus sounds great, the experimentation sonically works and some of the hate is just people who only want one thing, this happens anytime a band with a fanbase changes style, the listeners aren't here for that so it's labeled bad since they're the ones reviewing it. It's main issue is the cringe lyrics and unfitting vocal style. If it's instrumentals were resung it could be really good but it sounds super corny with the vocals, I'd love an instrumental version of it.
I think even the instrumentals are lacking personally, but to each their own. I do generally like it when bands experiment and move outside their comfort zone. It just didn't work for me on Illud.
please do the same with Deicide albums and regarding this morbid angel ranking I agree with you almost 100 percent except for domination, I consider domination one of my favorites, greetings from Colombia
Pretty much agree, but for me, Formulas Fatal to the Flesh is clearly number one, there are incredibly fast songs, doomy, slow songs, long epic ones, short, shocking ones… and it’s all brilliant (except those 3 midi-samples at the end). Next best is Blessed are the Sick, really versatile and cool album. Great ones for me are Altars, Covenant and Gateways, solid, lots of good songs but some kind of repetetive, uninteresting tracks thrown here and there. The rest I am not into, but Illud is hideous, by far the worst.
Great band and I really like the first four albums . This is how I rank them . Altars of madness Covenant Blessed are the sick Abominations Domination Gateways Formulas
Domination released on my actual birthday! (May 9th, 1995) For that reason I respect it, but it's definitely not one of my favorites. I still groove to Slime though lol. Guess that album means I was born to be a fan!
Haven't watched yet, but my pick for number 1 would be Gateways. It's so fucking heavy. Edit: hahaha, love that Illud Shitinus Unlistenable has a category of its own. Edit 2: How the fuck is covenant overrated 💀
People usually seem to usually rank Covenant first or second, but to me Altars, Blessed, and Formulas all beat it out. It's a great album, but I don't enjoy it as much as others seem to.
Nice list man, for me I would flip best with great because as good as Altars and Blessed are, Covenant and Formulas are just next level. I would also put Gateways in great, I find it to be a very underrated album but love the atmosphere. I think you hit the nail on the production on Heretic, but it's actually so bad that it masks the fact that some of the songs are actually good. Heretic songs performed live are pretty enjoyable for me. Overall not a good album though, I totally agree. In case you're interested, there's a show from after Formulas was released where they play all the songs faster than the album versions with amazing sound engineering and it is fucking heavy. Here's the playlist in case you haven't seen it and are interested: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-dPBQk5qyGbM.html
Your Morbid Angel ranking is similar to mine. Alters, Blessed, Covenant, and Formulas are all my top albums. Even though I'm a huge fan of industrial and death metal, Illud was indeed fucking terrible. If you want to hear industrial death metal done right, listen to Dissimulate by The Berzerker.
You approach your reviews with pure logic. I like that. To me, Altars and Blessed are overrated with a sense of fanboy sensationalism. Blessed espcially, it's mixed badly and doesn't have good enough production or song-writing to warrant as "great". Will check out more of your videos though!
Ok fine I’ll be that guy. I like Illud. I prefer it over Kingdoms Disdained even. Illud is basically the death metal equivalent to The Room. I also unironically enjoy the song 10 More Dead. Kingdoms disdained is boring which is something you could NEVER accuse Illud of being. 1. Altars 2. Gateways 3. Covenant 4. Formulas 5. Blessed 6. Heretic 7. Illud 8. Domination 9. Kingdoms
Can't really say I agree with putting Domination and Gateways in the same category. Gateways (to me) was a snoozefest, while Domination has a lot of variety and experimentation and exciting stuff going on. If only they changed some of the stupid lyrics and got rid of "Dreaming", which sounds like someone making music on their home computer in 1995.
Covenant is and always will be my favorite Morbid angel album as I love the production and the songwriting changed how I hear or think of extreme music forever Blessed are the sick and Domination would come in at a tie for number 2. A lot of people say they don't like Domination because it is more straight forward and has a cleaner production but I still love it. Altars Formulas Illud Kingdoms disdained for me was the biggest disappointment. Mainly the lack of good guitar solos and horrible production ruin it for me. I find Abominations completely unlistenable.
You forgot to mention Mike Browning from Nocturnus was the vocalist Of Abominations of Desolation. He was, and still is, a weak vocalist. Despite that, the album still has its moments.
It's definitely a lot more primitive than what they would do later. I've never thought Mike was particularly weak, although I guess he's never really stood out much to me either.
It might sound like typical DM, but that's only because they set a new standard with FFtF. This came right after all the classic bands had watered down their sound and black metal had taken over as the new scary kid on the block. Formulas, in my opinion, brought death metal back to life.
Why are you saying "strange" in context of morbid angel and death metal. HERETIC is exactly what its name suggests. And a very good morbid angel record.
For some reason it took a long time for me to get into them. I even liked the band Brutality, which took a lot of inspiration from MA before I liked the actual MA. F-Tier: 9. Illud Divinum Insanus I still respect the balls they had for actually releasing this garbage. C-Tier: 8. Heretic Would've been good as a 15-20 minute long EP. Even a good chunk of the "real" songs on here are nothing special. 7. Kingdoms Disdained Average comeback album. Nothing more, nothing less. B-Tier: 6. Domination Half of the songs are classic Morbid Angel, the other half boring and/or cringe. It's almost like two different bands wrote on this. 5. Blessed are the Sick The production and the useless instrumentals keep this album down. The mix should've been rawer. If you'd remove all instrumentals except Desolate Ways (which is quite nice), you'd still end up with 10 tracks/34 minutes of material. 4. Gateways to Annihilation The last of the truly great Morbid Angel and what a way to go out. A-Tier: 3. Altars of Madness Rightful classic but the 2nd half has some filler. 2. Formulas Fatal to the Flesh Most surreal atmosphere in their discography and probably their heaviest album. Gojira certainly build a career by worshipping "Nothing is Not". S-Tier: 1. Covenant Many people say it is their easiest to get into, for me it was one of the hardest. Perfect song writing and less nonsensical experimentation than on FFF earns this a top spot.
Aluminum Anus or whatever it's called is so insanely bad, that it's amazing because it's so funny. It's basically the Musical version of "The Room." I would honestly rather listen to Aluminum Toilet over Kingdoms or Heretic or even Domination, because it's so funny
@Metal Vibez honestly the "death metal songs" like nevermore are what makes the album boring. If the whole thing were like Too Extreme and Radikult, it'd be much funnier
For me, there are two very different Morbid Angels: the A to D one and the F to K one (three actually, I is third). I find both of them equally great. I really cannot put one album over another, they are just the very best of metal, all of them. I think though, 2nd MA is more mature and difficult to get in, but once you do, oh boy... Not all is good though, their "ambient" tracks are total crap. And then, there is an I album, yes... By itself a great album too, just doesn't fit. I think, david Vincent is a very toxic person and it is his toxic nature which makes this album so disliked. Actually, the 2Cds techno-remix-album is absolutely amazing!
As bad as Illud Anus is, the three "real" songs on it are still better than everything on Kingdoms of Piss Stain. Really though it's a moot point though because everything after Gateways is complete garbage.
I'm the only one who goes in defence of Illud 😂. There are horrible tracks but tracks like Existovulgore,Blades for Baal,Nevermore,10 more dead are very good and better than anything in Kingdom disdained
Yeah, that's about the most positive thing I've heard people say about Illud. I don't know if those tracks are better than everything on Kingdoms Disdained but they aren't bad.
I gave it a chance only song I can really like is nevermore just not for me personally I will try it out again in the future perhaps but for now my lease favorite from them
