20 Years Ago: MORBID ANGEL release Gateways to Annihilation

Daily Noise - / 2020

20 Years Ago: MORBID ANGEL release Gateways to Annihilation

MORBID ANGEL released their sixth studio album, Gatesways to Annihilation, on this day in 2000 through Earache.

...this one has a better production. We had a better engineer, Jim Morris, he got involved so much more than Tom did in the past. I think this album is, I'm not gonna tell you it's better, it's different. I believe the guitars are thicker. Also, the low end sound of the songs on this record is much heavier. I believe so because of the fact that most of the songs are seven string guitar songs which makes them sound heavier. Another thing that makes this album different is the contribution in the song writing. So there was a lot more input from everybody in this new album. This album is a total fuckin' winner. You better buy it or else die! Ha! Ha!

Pete Sandoval / Morbid Angel interview, Voices from the Darkside, 2000

For me right now, I have to say my favorite song is track no. 3 which is the 2nd song on the album. It's called "Ageless, Still I Am" and I like it very much because the recording captured the feeling of the song so well and it's such a new kind of song. But that doesn't mean that I like it a whole lot better than the other songs. I think all the songs are good. But there's something about this one particular song where it has the drums so grooving and so much feeling and so cool. The guitars are so well being orchestrated with the vocals. It's just really cool! I love it!!

Trey Azagthoth / Morbid Angel interview, Metal Rules, 2000

...like on "Formulas...", I wrote pretty much all the music and lyrics by myself. On this album ("Gateways..."), me and Steve co-wrote some songs. Steve wrote one song entirely by himself, music and lyrics. I wrote a few songs entirely by myself as far as music. I wrote lyrics for one song and Steve wrote lyrics for all the other songs. Some of them, I worked to on them a little bit, not as much with the words, but the phrasing. I really wanted this album to be really catchy. To be really powerful... and brutal... and sick and all that stuff, but still catchy. Being like sharpy, memorable, y'know, sing-along almost, but not wimpy or commercial. There's some bands out there that are really catchy and all of a sudden their sound is not as strong as it used to be. So I think what we did, was able to find a nice place where it's catchy and strong, y'know what I mean - without loosing either one. This album has got both of those elements, being catchy and sounding strong.

Trey Azagthoth / Morbid Angel interview, Metal Rules, 2000

I pretty much used the same guitar sound that I've always used. Just different cabinet, speaker - like my speaker's got kinda old, so I got some new speakers. But still the same, mainly the same rig, equipments as any of the other albums. Drums... we planned on using what we used which was gonna be all tricky drums this time without acoustic drums. A little bit of an acoustic snare - we did improvise on the actual snare drum and rented a new one that we used and liked the best. When I do my guitar solos, I do them in my house as I have a little studio there. And I improvise all my solos. Every solo that I played on the album, I really wanted to capture the feeling without it being thought-out. Almost closing the eyes and just playing and feeling the moment and record, y'know what I mean? As opposed to planning, there wasn't a lot of planning on the solos.

Even though most every song on this new album is a 7-string -songs, so it's down-tuned A-sharp. On "Formulas..." there was like 4-5 songs that were 7-string -songs. This album has eight and one song that is a 6-string -tuned, y'know, more standard D-sharp, so that's a difference.

Trey Azagthoth / Morbid Angel interview, Metal Rules, 2000

There's incredibly moody stuff on this album. There's also guitar-synthesizers stuff, but not a lot, however. On the next album probably even more. I didn't wanna like over-load and totally come into something strange - to where there's too different. But there are some moments where there's a guitar lead and there's a synthesizer which is a guitar, but with synthesizer's sound and they blend together really nice and very atmospheric and moody. And then there's also some solos where I do/ I did on "Formulas..." where I used weird sounds like a fan that blows air. And this fan will be in between the microphone and a cabinet and it will make a certain kind of a quivering sound to a guitar. And you can really hear that really, really good on this album. There are a couple of parts like like that. I think this album has got a lot of mood, a lot of feeling and it's just flying. And some of it has some of the feeling kind of PINK FLOYD and THE GATHERING, but maybe little faster.

Trey Azagthoth / Morbid Angel interview, Metal Rules, 2000