Morbid Angel - Altars Of Madness (1989)

Quality Floridian death metal, but not in the same vain as much of the other same-sounding American sludge, these guys instead opting for bombastic yet equally hellish noise, barking courtesy of one of my favourite death vocalists, David Vincent.
What Morbid Angel offer which many other bands of this ilk don’t is difficult to pin-down but the twisted riffs and stormy vocals add a kind of wicked and psychotic atmosphere, even if the titles are rather cheesy, ‘Chapel Of Ghouls’, ‘Maze Of Torment’, etc, etc, but this is pure unholy cacophony, similar in vein to the debut album Deicide which also frothed in the right places, both records coming across like some billowing storm which you cannot help but be caught up in.
Although this was the follow-up to the band’s more removed black metal opus, with Vincent on board, ‘Altars…’ hit the scene as an immensely arrogant and thrashing serpent.
8/10