By Andrew Bansal
Florida death metal legends Morbid Angel are currently on the Covenant 20th Anniversary North American tour, wherein they’re playing the iconic record in its entirety, along with choice selections from the other albums. They played at the Fonda Theatre in Hollywood on Friday November 29th, and left their Los Angeles fan base completely satisfied with what they brought on to the stage. A few hours before they began their extreme metal onslaught, I had the pleasure of sitting down and talking in person to bassist/vocalist David Vincent. We discussed the tour, the Covenant, the next album, the drummer situation and more. Read the chat below.
How’s this tour been for you guys? You’ve done quite a few shows and now you’re coming to the final week of it.
Yeah, we have! The excitement level has been really off the chain. It’s impressive. We’ve had a lot of really, really good shows and people feel it, man. We’re up there delivering the goods every night, like always. One thing we’ve always prided ourselves on is our live delivery. It’s nice that people are appreciative of the energy we give and they give it right back to us. So, wins for everybody!
I believe you played at Slim’s in San Francisco a couple of nights ago. They get all kinds of shows nowadays, thrash, folk and death metal to name a few. How was that?
That was a great show! Packed, sweaty, gnarly, nasty, lots of energy, just the way a good metal show should be.
And we’re at the Fonda Theatre tonight. Have you played here or even attended any shows before?
I’ve not. Normally we’ve played at House of Blues or some of the other venues. There’s a lot of venues here, which is not a bad thing. This seems like a really nice venue so I’m looking forward to the show as well.
It changes up the scene for you and it’s something different to look forward to, right?
Well yeah, what’s important to me is that we’re at a place where we can perform to the best of our ability but also that there’s good sight lines and good audio for the audience, because ultimately these are people that are parting with their hard-earned cash to buy a ticket to the show and we want to make sure that they get their money’s worth.
It’s a pretty fancy venue, looking at the marquee and the overall setting. It’s ironic that we’re having an extreme metal show here tonight but it should be good.
I hope so! Whenever two or more gather in our name, there will be metal.
So, talking of Covenant, you’re celebrating its 20th anniversary by playing it in entirety on this tour. It released in 1993 so you obviously knew all along that 2013 would be the 20th anniversary. Was this an idea that was in your mind for a while?
Actually not. We’ve never done themed tours per se, other than on our first record, the ‘Altars Of Madness’ tour. We went out and played the record because, well, that’s all the material we had at the time. But this is the first time we’ve actually gone on and said, ‘Hey we’re going to do this album.’ But it seemed fitting because it was a very important record. Well, all the Morbid Angel records are important to us but this was the first record we had that was part of the Warner Brothers family here in the States, and it provided a lot of opportunities for us. We made some great videos, some great touring and it’s a chance for us to go back and revisit some songs that we haven’t played in a long time, some of them we’ve never played live. So this is a good opportunity for us to just share the entire vision of that record with an audience some of which would have been in diapers when the album came out. So now they get to see it up close and in person.
When the album originally came out, you toured in support of it in 93-94. Compared to that period, how are the songs sounding now in 2013, in your own opinion?
I think they sound really good, personally. Of course, you’re going to write whatever you want to write and hopefully you like it as well. I think it comes across every bit as strong and then some, compared to the time the album was released.
I’ll wait and find out tonight. But as you said earlier, some of these songs wouldn’t have been in the live set back then, because when an album comes out you pick only some songs to be in the live set. In playing the Covenant album, is it the biggest challenge to make each and every one of its songs sound good live?
Well, we’re a good band. Everyone in the band is a consummate musician, and even though Thor and Timothy were not on the recording, they’re both excellent players and they own all the material as though they did play on it. I’m thankful that I’m surrounded by such great musicians.
The fact that they were not on the original album, did that lead to any extended rehearsals or anything like that or were they able to cope up with it on their own?
We generally have rehearsals because we care. We rehearse for two or three weeks before we do anything, just because it’s important. We’re musicians and we’re entertainers. These days the economy isn’t great and I just want to make sure it’s important for me that any time someone buys a ticket to the show, they get their money’s worth, that they don’t get slop and half-assed. I don’t know what those things mean. ‘Half-assed’ and ‘slop’ is not and never will be a part of the repertoire of Morbid Angel.
Other than Covenant, you’re also playing a string of additional material on this tour. Is that all old stuff as well?
Basically we’re playing one song from each of the other albums.
So it’s a very anthological kind of performance.
Exactly.
After this, what’s the next step and when can we expect the next album?
Well, we’re always writing. I don’t have any announcements to make currently, but stay tuned. We’re prolific at our own pace. We’ve never been a band that puts out a record every year. It’s usually been a couple of years between records for Morbid Angel. So, stay tuned!
The previous album got mixed reactions, to say the least, which you and I are aware of. How do you go from that to the next album? Is it going to be a clean slate and a fresh start or would you pick up from where you left off on that one?
See, I don’t look at things quite the same way. Those who know our history know that we’ve had challenges with each of our records. Believe it or not, ‘God Of Emptiness’ on Covenant is one of the biggest songs the band has ever had. It was also one that got the most amount of criticism. But people eventually caught up to it and went, ‘Oh, OK!’ Sometimes people have it in their mind that they want to hear a certain thing because they’ve heard it before and it’s more familiar to them. There’s plenty of bands that do that. They put out a record and you can guess exactly what it’s going to sound like before it comes out and your guess would most often be perfectly spot-on. We’re not that band. Never have been.
May be it’s one of those albums which would sound better to the fans a few years down the line.
That’s usually the way it works, because I remember when ‘Blessed Are The Sick’ came out. Everybody was like, ‘Oh, they slowed down!’ There’s always somebody looking for something. There’s nothing slow on that record, and it only started off with a slow riff. The fast stuff on that record was much faster than anything that was on Altars. So, you do something and it takes people a while to get used to it. I don’t see that being different for any of the stuff that we do.
Right, and there’s also a lot of talk among fans about the drummer situation. Have you been comfortable with Tim Yeung’s performance and do you think he’ll feature on the next album as well?
Well listen, Timothy is a great drummer. Pete is no longer the drummer for Morbid Angel, and this is where we are. Anybody that listens to Timothy’s playing, him and Pete are different. They approach their instruments differently, but again, it’s important not to sound like someone else and not try to be someone else. You must be yourself and play the songs and own them in the way that you feel the most comfortable with them. So, there are some things that sound slightly different. I mean, I know these things because I’ve been playing these songs for many years, but most people have commented that they thought it sounds really good, and I agree with that comment.
Finally I’d like to ask you, you’ve been playing extreme metal for so long, but as a fan yourself, do you still enjoy listening to other bands playing that kind of a style or have you moved away from that?
I like metal. I’m a metal guy. I do listen to other things as well. But it’s not so much what style of music something is supposed to be, and it’s more about how well it is done. If something touches me artistically, it doesn’t matter to me what style of music it is. It’s either good or it’s not. Just because somebody plays a certain style of music does not necessarily mean that it’s well done or it’s well written, or that I hear emotion and passion in the music. Those are the things that are important to me. So, yes there’s a lot of metal that I like but it doesn’t only have to be metal for me to like it. If it’s well done and well-written, then that’s the determiner of whether I’m able to listen to something and it takes me somewhere or I feel the emotion in it. That’s what makes me like something more than, ‘Oh, I play this style!’ Ok, great! Make me feel it, and may be I’ll like it.
Related: Morbid Angel LA gig review
Visit Morbid Angel on the web:
MorbidAngel.com
facebook.com/OfficialMorbidAngelPage
Remaining tour dates:
12/3 Austin, TX @ Red 7
12/4 Houston, TX @ Warehouse Live
12/6 Orlando, FL @ Beacham Theater
12/7 Ft. Lauderdale, FL @ Culture Room