REVIEW: MORBID ANGEL 'ILLUD DIVINUM INSANUS' (SEASON OF MIST)

So Floridian death metal "mystics" Morbid Angel have made a duff album, is anyone really all that surprised? It's been nearly a decade since their last disc, 2003's 'Heretic', and longer still since rubber-clad frontman David Vincent was involved in anything other than glowstick-swallowing industrial nobodies Genitorturers. Even then they've always been utterly, fanatically convinced that whatever they did was a special, somehow magical little snowflake glittering on the slopes of hell.

It's not a deliberate attempt to make a shit album, it's just the type of thing that old dudes do when they get old. They mistake things that were cool last time they stepped into a record shop as being cool now, and the older you get, the longer that gap between hearing new music or seeing a band that you haven't seen a million times before as you stroll up to the festival you're headlining 40 minutes before you're due to go on stage, the more likely you are to remain convinced that Burton C Bell is still king of the world. Now we're all living in space age 2011, true death metal horror can only really be represented by a drum sound generated by a Casio keyboard and lyrics need to be a bit more... a bit more... oh, the mind just goes the older I get, er, Trey, who was it that played just before us at Ohio Beatdown Brodown? Lamb of God? Devildriver? Man, that shit is hard. Excuse me one moment, I need to sponge down the rubber - there's been some leakage.

We have good Morbid Angel albums, those exist and they're not going anywhere. So just keep eye contact, smile reassuringly and try and get the front door closed on them as you would a family member you haven't seen for years, one who suddenly appeared at the door all scabby, dribbling and piss-streaked, shuffling around inside his trousers like a man throttling a ferret.

What's far more interesting than this excreta-flecked blast of groove metal, industrial metal and delusional pomposity are the internal acrobatics that magazines are doubtless going through as they come up with reasons to give it a good review, so invested both emotionally and fiscally are they in the idea of a new Morbid Angel album. Covers have been planned, outside back cover ads with Season Of Mist have been booked and exclusive cover CD tracks, pictures and interviews have been negotiated for with all the feverish intensity of someone trying to secure the release of his children from furry paedophile ring, and they can't allow reality to undermine that and blow their big chance.

So have a good old flick through the press, and watch as Morbid Angel and Record Label Newsletter Monthly sustain each other's delusions, willingly ignorant of the fact that listeners/readers are dropping out on both in their legion.