... Finally it was time for Morbid Saint to play and after the delay and several sets you could tell the audience was getting a little restless. The audience wouldn’t settle for a bad performance from the headliner at this point and Morbid Saint delivered. The crowd erupted into a mosh pit from the first note played and frontman Pat Lind really kept the intensity up the entire show despite the heat that was becoming overwhelming. The band did not play Spectrum Of Death start to finish as they had at MDF but instead kept the set list pretty varied, they even played songs off their never officially released 1992 demo Destruction System and some other obscure material as well. They had a few extended pauses between songs because the drummer was overheating but they mostly played songs back to back to back. There were crowd surfers and people flying in and out of the mosh pit the entire set with the intensity reaching its apex when Morbid Saint played “Lock Up Your Children.” Maybe I’m just getting old but by the time it was over I was feeling pretty drained and headed straight to the water fountains. A big thanks goes out to Mariana and the AU Independent Arts Collective for making this show happen. I hope they put on more awesome metal shows in the future. Getting the chance to see one of the classic old thrash bands up close in a small, sweaty, sold out room was like stepping into a time machine back to the days of Heavy Metal Parking Lot and despite the other options that night, there’s nowhere else I’d have rather been.

I’ve never heard of Morbid Saint before, but they sure managed to impress me with their energetic live set. Just like Decapitated, they’re out for blood. In their entire career, the band only released one album, which they played at rapid fire pace. Songs like ‘Damien’, ‘Crying For Death’ and ‘Scars’ were the highlights of their set. The band’s energy caused the audience to go nuts with a lot of violent moshpits as a result. Impressive. (MS)

Morbid Saint, all the way from Sheboygan, Wisconsin, making their first ever West Coast appearance were up next and they seemed genuinely thrilled and happy to be playing in Los Angeles for the very first time. The manner in which LA crowds respond to thrash took them by surprise a little bit, and they definitely got pumped by the energy coming from this huge crowd. A lot of people were mentioning before the show that Morbid Saint was the main band they were here to see, and it showed in the kind of circle pits that broke out, and the raucous cheers they gave when the vocalist announced a couple of the better-know songs. An absolutely brutal performance by Morbid Saint, and I do not understand why they haven’t been to LA before this. They were inactive for a long time, then started back again in 2010, and based on last night’s show they’re excited to be back, and mean business. -

See more at: http://metalassault.com/gig_reviews/2013/05/12/the-return-of-thrasho-de-mayo/#sthash.yqLJBYP8.dpuf

This is an album I listened to five times straight when I finally got my hands on it. This is an album that’s so heavy, it gave me a goddamn headache, an album that stands the test of time to this very day, an album that single-handedly defines what it means to thrash. This is Morbid Saint, the heaviest ***ing band to come out of the thrash scene in the late 1980’s. This is the band’s first and last offering to the world, and although this is the only album they made, it still without a doubt made an impact on the late 80’s thrash scene.

Review Summary: This album will kick your ass and give you a headache.

Combining the heavy riffing of thrash metal with the harsh vocals of death metal, this thirty minute monster will satisfy even modern metal fans. The album’s strengths are heavy and compelling riffing, and expertly executed solos that sound frantic and angry. Vocals also sound evil and pissed off, and that fits the band’s aggressive style perfectly. Every instrument is played with speed and precision, and the band takes no prisoners with an attitude and extreme sound that gives them a certain unique style and sets them apart from other bands.

No sooner had Blood Feast left the stage than the fans began anticipating the main event. Morbid Saint had phenomenal energy. They proved to be just as tight as they ever were. Frontman Pat Lind ran back and forth like an animal unleashed. Highlights included “Scars,” “Assassin,” (which were played back to back) “Lock Up Your Children,” and a brand new track entitled “Dying to Live.” Each song sounded twice as fierce live as it did on the album with “Dying to Live” being a great new song that holds up to the classics. The band is as devastating now as they were in their heyday. There is a reason their shirts say “I saw Morbid F*cking Saint Live” on them. They are truly a sight to be seen and a true honor to witness.

Years ago, back when I was getting into the genre as a young, naive metalhead, thrash metal was probably one of the most extreme forms of music I had set my ears upon. And like many other people I’m sure, the apex of brutality lay with Slayer, “Reign in Blood” was unlike anything else ever heard, the most brutal and maniacal sounding noise ever put to disc. Then came Teutonic thrash, Sodom, Destruction and the ilk and not long after Morbid Saint crawled out of the abyss of underground thrash and propelled it to a completely unheralded level of brutality and evil that few bands have ever come close to matching. Simply put, “Spectrum of Death” makes “Reign in Blood” and “Pleasure to Kill” sound about as offensive as the fucking Beach Boys.

The fact that “Spectrum of Death” still remains much of a mystery to many casual fans of thrash metal is due to a myriad of various reasons, they had their problems and most notably the lack of distribution and backing of a decent label severely scuppered their ability to get “Spectrum of Death” the recognition it deserved, and is still much of a problem to this day with even shitty bootlegs fetching crazy prices on eBay. If you were to try and pin a sound on “Spectrum of Death” I would say the closest thing would be that it was the fastest, most aggressive and homicidal thrash album never to come out of 80’s Germany, I mean this had about as much in common with American thrash at the time as The Beatles did. I’d maybe even go so far to say that “Spectrum of Death” could be filed in along with the likes of Possessed as a very primitive form of the early stages of US death metal, and it’s understandable when you realise Chuck Schuldiner was a huge fan of the band, bagging them numerous support slots along with Death.

Musically it’s an album that’s basically unrivalled in terms of vicious, bone grinding ferocity. Take the intro to the classic opener ‘Lock up Your Children”, the pulverising double kick and breakneck riffing is just flat out insane; and then you have Pat’s vocals, you’d almost believe that was Pat on the fucking cover, a demon tore up from the bowels of hell spitting blasphemy with an aggression that would rip the flesh from your bones. The shorter songs such as ‘Burned at the Stake’, ‘Damien’, ‘Crying for Death’ are all infested with an absolute mountain of face cleaving riffs and unbridled drum work that’s somewhat comparable to being caught in a furnace of broken glass; they’ll leave you utterly exhausted, blanketed in bloody lacerations and needing extensive neck surgery . If that isn’t a sign of a good thrash album then you’re probably better off listening to “The Black Album”.

With the drumming, it’s the ‘not-give-a-shit’ looseness of the timing that really gives the album that psychotic feel; it’s incessant, imposing and so punishing I’d rate this as the finest drum performance any thrash metal album in history, quite a statement. Similarly the guitar work spewed forth by Jim and Jay is a continual bombardment of saw toothed riffs and incinerating solos flailing wildly all over the place. It’s the longer tracks on the album that really set it alight though, ‘Assassin’, widely regarded as the best on the album has tempo shifts galore ranging from fast to hyper-fast and together with that break at 1:12 it’s enough to cause a seizure. The best thrash song ever? Probably. ‘Scars’ is similar in its execution, inhuman vocals expelled from the maelstrom of riffs and drums; it’s probably fair to say Pat Lind sounds like Mille Petrozza on crack. Oh and then there’s the breakdown in ‘Beyond the Gates of Hell’, a fitting closer to the album that in case there’s anything left standing makes sure it’s levelled to dust by the end of the album. Find me a chorus in the whole genre of thrash with as much wretched conviction as Pat screaming “Beyond the gates of hell, looking through the dark, forever I will be, beyond the gates of hell” and you’re a better man than I. Pure unadulterated evil.

Thrash has never and will never reach this level of ferocity ever again, many have come close, for me only Dark Angel and Demolition Hammer have threatened to usurp the throne of Morbid Saint in terms of sheer unhinged brutality. It’s everything thrash metal should be and unfortunate they never got the recognition they deserved when it mattered, when the album originally came out. What more can I really say about this iconic slab of thrash metal that hasn’t been already? It’s just been rereleased on vinyl by Relapse and CD by the band themselves, so now you’ve got no excuse.
- Memnarch

Maryland Deathfest 2012 revisited - Saturday, May 26

HEAVY METALJUNE 1, 2012BY: JEFFREY TANDY

It's understood that at music festivals, it's not possible to see all the bands. Overlapping showtimes aside, unless you're brand new to metal, events like MDF are places where friends from all over the world congregate. Sometimes it is a choice between catching up with people or watching a band, and in this reporter's case the latter option regularly won out. Even so, there was plenty of metal goodness to watch.

The skies threatened rain when death thrashers Morbid Saint hit the stage at 5pm, so while it was plenty humid, the sun didn't get a chance to beat down on the excited throngs below. Morbid Saint is one of those bands who got caught in the undertow of obscurity despite releasing a pretty amazing debut back in 1988, but thanks to reissues and word of mouth, they've built up a lot of currency with fans both old and new. Plenty of people were right up front to hear the group play their sole LP, Spectrum of Death, in its entirety, and it was already bedlam with the first notes of opener, “Lock Up Your Children”.

It was really something to watch guys who looked like they could be coaching little league soccer take the stage and rip out some of the most scathing thrash this side of Kreator and Dark Angel. Vocalist Pat Lind hasn't lost any of his banshee-grade shriek, and despite the heat the band hurtled through the songs with few pauses. This set also featured one of the fest's most intense responses; the pit was large and unrelenting, complete with an impromptu 'wall of death', the retaining fences were almost shaken apart, and a Morbid Saint shirt thrown into the crowd was all but drawn and quartered in a vicious battle between fans. After completing the last song, the band treated everyone to a bonus in the form of a beloved demo track, “Thrashoholic”. Based on their New York appearance last January, the expectations were high already, but it's safe to say that Morbid Saint was one of the festival's highlights.