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Morgoth: Best of 1987 - 1997

09/09/05 || Lord K Philipson

Do you guys even remember these blowjobs? The first thing that comes to my mind while talking about Morgoth is “why did they release 2 mini-albums for starters instead of a real full-length?”. I wonder how many times they got that question in the interviews they did back at the time. I sure as hell remember I asked it when I interviewed vocalist Marc Grewe back in the early 90’s, when Morgoth played their first (and only?) gig in Sweden. Thanx to the CD-booklet for this CD I learned that this very show in Sweden was the first ever for bassist Sebastian Swart. Interesting huh?

This is also very interesting: Morgoth’s released the following shit prior to this compilation:

“Resurrection Absurd” – Mini-album, 1989
“Eternal Fall” – Mini-album, 1990
“Cursed” – 1991
“Odium” – 1993
“Feel Sorry For The Fanatic” – 1996

Well, whether Morgoth are good enough to release a best-of album or not after those albums, I’ll leave for others to decide. They obviously think they are anyways so here we are granted with a full-packed 2-disc CD, like it or not.

These best-of compilations usually don’t serve much purpose but Morgoth’s version is actually quite entertaining thanx to some videos and demo-tracks. Or so I thought until I heard the demo-tracks and saw the videos… But more of that later.

However…

For us who followed these guys from the first 2 mini-albums knows that they stole pretty much every riff for their songs from old Death and Obituary at that time. They managed to pull of their death metal quite well thanx to that though being from Germany, a country not very known for excellent death metal back in those days.

This disc shows how the full-on “Death metal Morgoth” turned into the “Less and less death metal included and now we are starting to kind of really suck so let’s call it quits Morgoth”. Listening to the unpolished death metal they started out with and comparing it to the last shit they recorded really shows 2 different bands, of which I prefer the first mentioned one. Their latest industrial/whatever-influenced bullshit was never anything that I managed to get into, thank fuck.

So, their whole career is (naturally, it IS a “best-of”, fuckzoids) covered here in bits and pieces, and I enjoy listening to this for good old death metal memories. I don’t know how much of a purpose this thing serves though as I can’t imagine anyone going out to buy this (yeah, I got my jewel-case copy for free from Century Media, ofcourse) in the year of 2005. Morgoth were never that big a death metal act you know. At least not as far as I know. They had their following of some sort, but they were never a Obituary, Morbid Angel or Death.

Anyways…

3 tracks from every Morgoth-release (in chronological order even, duh) is what we get here. The songs from the mini-albums still sound rough as I remembered them, and they are still enjoyable for sure. I take “”Eternal Fall” (1990) over “Resurrection Absurd”(1989) any day though. Unpolished death metal that works is the deal. Think early Death only not as good and you got the sound. For me, their finest hour was the long-awaited full-length “Cursed”, from 1991. Those tunes still sound real good to me after years of not listening to that album. Simple and catchy death metal, I don’t crave much to be satisfied sometimes. The tunes from “Odium” (1993) varies from decent to good. This album is where Morgoth decided to start incorporating some more non-death metal influences, but still keeping it death metal-based. Some of the material is a bit more industrial-based than on the debut, but without losing the death metal touch. Was that 3 “death metal” in 2 sentences? Good. Losing it completely they did with their swansong “Feel sorry for the fanatic”. A crappy album it is, and it has nothing to do with the Morgoth I kinda like.

The demotracks from 1988 are (much thanx to Marc’s crappy vocals) pretty goddamn awful, but I guess they tried to make a point at the time. ” – Hello, we are Morgoth and we suck. Give us a record-deal dammit”. Marc sounds like a 2nd grade black metal troll of today, and proud of it. Which he shouldn’t be. Not even at that time. Luckily he pulled his shit together for the mini-albums and managed to get a somewhat decent growl out of himself. I think there’s a slight possibility that he heard John Tardy once or twice before those albums… Whatever, if Marc sounded bad on the demo-tracks we could blame it on being recorded very early in their career, right? But, when it comes to the “early version” of the track “TV War” ( from 1994, quite a few years after their mini-cd’s you know) I don’t know what to blame his vocals on… But it is The Suck. It’s not even a troll anymore, it’s just The Suck.

The “rare and unreleased” song “Golden Age” is a decent death metal tune. Nothing more, nothing less.

The “rare” track from the “Feel sorry for the fanatic” recordings should have stayed fucken “rare” as in “unwritten” and “kept away from everyone”. At this point of their career I think the guys completely lost all common sense. Good thing they called it quits coz this band was going down the toilet, fast.

I enjoy the first disc of the CD, it’s decent to good death metal material all over (except for the stuff from “Feel sorry for the fanatic”), but you already know this if you know yer death metal. Morgoth are good for walking down death metal memory-lane for a second, but if you have the original albums there’s not much use to buy this one for the demo-tracks and videos.

The mentioned videos in this package are ok. For viewing once.

7 horrible demo-vocals out of 10

Information
Released: 2005
Label: Century Media
Website: www.morgoth.eastpool.com
Band
Marc Grewe: vocals
Harry Busse: guitar
Carsten Otterbach: guitar
Sebastian Swart: bass
Rudiger Hennecke: drums

Tracklist
CD1:
01. Selected Killing
02. Lies Of Distrust
03. Travel
04. Burnt Identity
05. White Gallery
06. Pits Of Utumno
07. Body Count
08. Isolated
09. Sold Baptism
10. Resistance
11. Under The Surface
12. Drowning Sun
13. This Fantastic Decade
14. Graceland
15. Last Laugh
CD2
* 01. From Dusk To Dawn – Pits of Utumno demo (1988)
02. Being Boiled- Pits of Utumno demo (1988)
03. Eternal Sanctity – Pits of Utumno demo (1988)
04. Pits Of Utumno – Pits of Utumno demo (1988)
05. The Beyond- Pits of Utumno demo (1988)
06. Dance Their Dance- Pits of Utumno demo (1988)
07. Golden Age – Unreleased demo version (1992)
08. TV War – Early version with different lyrics of “A New Start” (1994)
09. Indifferent – Rare track from the “Feel Sorry… ” recording session (1996)

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