review: Morbid Saint -- brutal thrash from the 1980s

Morbid Saint: Spectrum of Death (re-release) High Roller Records 14.05.2021

When Morbid Saint’s name started to make the rounds in the United States outside of their Packerland home, they seemed to arrive a bit too late in 1990. As a Wisconsin band, and not a California, New York, or (in 1990 the red-hot) Florida band, things, as you would imagine, were more difficult for them in the frozen tundra. Apparently recorded in 1988, this debut album was released in 1990. By the late 1980s, thrash bands were excited about the possibility of following Metallica’s footsteps on the way to commercial success and becoming full-time musicians. The bands had slowed down, softened their sound, and were doing ballads, slow songs, and more covers, adding more melody, and cleaning up their sound in the hopes of getting on the radio and MTV, especially after they saw the softer Slayer, Megadeth and Anthrax following Metallica’s blueprint for commercial success.

Morbid Saint was out of time and out of luck.

Meanwhile, the more adventurous thrash fans and bands had their sights set on the veritable wave bubbling underneath: the unstoppable rise of death metal that was already well underway in the United States. Morbid Saint was a thrash band, but this is the type of thrash that in the late 1980s would soon turn into full-blown death metal. This is way too fast, too frantic, too brutal for the thrash of the time, and the vocals—we would say today—are closer to black or extreme metal.

They happen to sound like a combination of two bands’ albums: Kreator’s 1986 Pleasure to Kill and Dark Angel’s 1986 Darkness Descends. The mode of operation is relentless thrash: the drummer hits hard and fast, the guitar sound is classic-thrash, the vocals are the near-black metal shriek of Kreator, and Morbid Saint stays there for the entire duration. No attempts to slow down and show that they can do ballads or be melodic. They show that they shred and play brutal thrash, and do it well, that’s the whole story. Morbid Saint is one of the few thrash bands that can hang with death and black metal. For fans of death and black metal, this is one thrash album that may surprise you. High Roller Records says: "Now the incendiary classic gets a due vintage treatment, with both sound (remastered by Patrick W. Engel at Temple of Disharmony studio) and artwork (by John Kujawa, who also designed sleeves for the likes of Acrophet and Numskull) staying true to the original. The new High Roller vinyl edition guarantees a most authentic overall experience for connoisseurs and the uninitiated alike."

https://www.hrrshop.de

https://www.hrrshop.de/MORBID-SAINT-Spectrum-of-Death-LP-BLACK_1

[this link is here for informational purposes; this link not from High Roller Records, on whose album version this review is based] Morbid Sain̲t̲ - Spectrum O̲f̲ Death - Full album 1988