By: Daniel Jackson
Album Type:
Full Length
Date Released:
01/12/2017
Label:
Silver Lining Music
This
album is a statement of intent, placing the focus on convulsive rhythm changes
and dissonant, jagged riffs over accessibility. ‘Kingdoms Disdained’ is Morbid Angel's most
uncompromising album of their career and their best album in nearly twenty
years, and I don’t consider that light praise.
‘Kingdoms Disdained’ CD////DDLP track listing:
1. Piles of Little Arms
2. D.E.A.D.
3. Garden of Disdain
4. The Righteous Voice
5. Architect and Iconoclast
6. Paradigms Warped
7. The Pillars Crumbling
8. For No Master
9. Declaring New Law (Secret Hell)
10. From the Hand of Kings
11. The Fall of Idols
The Review:
‘Illud
Divinum Insanus’ was a fucking disaster. I’ll
never begrudge artists testing new waters or feeling like they need to do
something different. But when the end result is shitting the bed, the best you
can do is take it as a learning experience and head back to the drawing board.
In Morbid Angel’s case, that meant Trey Azagthoth
scrapping the entire lineup from ‘Illud
Divinum Insanus’ and starting over completely. Replacing that lineup here
is Steve Tucker, returning to the bassist/vocalist role he held for most of the
period from 1997 through 2004, along with current Annihilated/ex-Abysmal Dawn drummer Scott Fuller.
The fruit of these extensive changes
is ‘Kingdoms Disdained’, and the
obvious point of interest here is whether they were able to put something
together worthy of the Morbid Angel name after
such a brutal fall from grace. The answer is a resounding yes. At this early
stage, ‘Kingdoms Disdained’ feels
like Morbid Angel’s best work since “Formulas Fatal to the Flesh”. Of course,
there will be some that prefer ‘Gateways’
or ‘Heretic’, but to these ears, this
album beats them both. Those two albums took a lot of time and effort to
appreciate, with a lot of attempts made to try to hear what other people liked
so much about them. By contrast, ‘Kingdoms
Disdained’ clicked immediately despite being an incredibly dense piece of
work. This album is a statement of intent, placing the focus on convulsive
rhythm changes and dissonant, jagged riffs over accessibility.
“D.E.A.D.”
might be the song most emblematic of the whole of the album. It’s a
three-minute death metal freakout, rarely staying in one space for more than a
repetition or two, completely unwilling to sit still. Azagthoth’s guitar work
and Fuller’s drumming alternate between maniacal swarming and spasmodic
outbursts of galloping rhythm and stabbing musical punctuation. Throughout the
rest of the album, these themes are explored in others songs in longer forms,
but “D.E.A.D.” gathers them all into
one place and condenses them.
Even the album’s low points never
drop below the “fine” threshold, though I think a case can be made that the
album would be better-served at forty minutes rather than forty-eight. Really,
the only song worth cutting out altogether is “The Pillars Crumbling”, which is only able to offer a less
interesting version of everything else going on around it. “Declaring New law” gets hung up on one
rhythmic idea for too long, and would have benefitted from having at least one
other major section to keep things from being monotonous. But even with these
faults, the greatness outweighs the skippable moments by a gigantic margin.
If I had to guess, I’d imagine that
fan reaction will be mixed for ‘Kingdoms
Disdained’. I can see this album being difficult to get into for some fans,
if only because it’s so hellbent on being a complete repudiation of the album
that came before it, that it throws just about any kind of accessibility by the
wayside. You’re not going to find any instantly memorable riffs like those of “Maze of Torment” or “Where The Slime Live” here. In that
sense, ‘Kingdoms Disdained’
overcompensates for the indiscretions of Morbid Angel’s recent
past, but in the process makes the most uncompromising album of their career.
For my money, that’s enough to make this their best album in nearly twenty
years, and I don’t consider that light praise. Now all we can do is see how
well an album like this stands the test of time.
“Kingdoms
Disdained” is available to order here.
