Proud Legacy

Polarising audiences is familiar territory for Morbid Angel, the first extreme death metal band signed to a major. The critical mauling and fan revolt that greeted the Floridian death metal progenitors' 2011 record, Illud Divinum Insanus, wasn't the first instance they've irked facets of their following. When 1993's Covenant, their third full-length, was unleashed, although among the genre's highest-selling releases and arguably its pinnacle, they had to contend with sniping factions.

“We've always had our naysayers and detractors, and those people just don't realise that we feed off that,” bassist/vocalist David Vincent enthuses. “I love it when someone tells me, 'No,' because I always turn it into a 'Yes.' There was a lot of people that said, 'You have no business doing this,' and 'What you guys are doing is ridiculous.' And they're right, it was ridiculous. Which is a good reason why I think people really gravitated towards it, because it was ridiculous, and there wasn't really a whole lot going on at that time. It was a very underground style of music that there weren't many people doing it. So we were obviously thrilled at the opportunities that record deal and that working with those partners afforded us.”

Although experiencing personnel changes since, does Vincent view Covenant (which, following a 2013 US run, they'll perform in full here) as their definitive release? “I think they all are in their own way, but it certainly was the record that gave us a big launch, both here and worldwide. Because we got signed to a major label [Warner] with that record in the States and they had big budgets. We were able to make a couple of videos that got played quite a bit. We really got a chance to share our music with a lot of people who probably to that point were not familiar with the band. We did a lot of touring, actually opened for Black Sabbath. So it really changed everything for us. There's no better compliment, at least that I can imagine, than 20 years later a record having that kind of impact that it can generate the excitement that it has.”

Death metal and major label eventually proved a less-than-ideal combination. “This whole music is difficult. It's difficult to play, it takes a lot of energy and some people would probably argue that it's difficult to listen to. But it's what we do well. We really are unfazed by what's going on around us. We always looked inward for our inspiration, as opposed to, 'Gee, what's everyone else doing?'

“We were concerned with what we were doing, and I think you can hear that in the music. Back in those days, there were other bands that were playing extreme death metal, but everybody sounded different. They all had their own style. Today, there are a lot of things, at least to my ears, sound rather derivative. There's some really good stuff too, but I would say that the motherload of bands, really in all genres, it just sounds really derivative.”