Warfather - Orchestrating The Apocalypse (2014)

My favorite Morbid Angel album, and my favorite death metal album, is Formulas Fatal To The Flesh (1998), and my favorite Morbid Angel vokillist is Steve Tucker. The one and only time I saw Morbid Angel I think I was the sole person in the crowd who was like Dave Vincent, sure, fine, but I wish Steve Tucker was here. Not to discount the enormity of the achievement of the non-Steve Tucker years (parenthetically, I must have also been one of the handful of people who actually liked Illud Divinum Insanus!), but Morbid Angel were at their most fluid, most psychedelic, most organic, most 5-Dimensional when he was in the band. So I am super-psyched that he is rejoining Morbid Angel to make new music and hopefully tour so I can see them with him! Until that time, what I have to console myself with is Steve Tucker's band Warfather, whose 2014 album Orchestrating The Apocalypse I have been chilling out to. I am Old-School Florida Death Metal, so this sounds pretty epic and 'progressive' to me, what with classically-influenced all-over compositional strategies, choral parts, semi-disharmonic grooves. The production here is, to me, awesome, because it is not super-compressed. All of the instruments are distinctly audible from each other, and have their own space to move around in. I cannot tell you how much I appreciate this. Apparently this album gets negative points from some listeners for its dry tone and production, but I for one really love it and it gives Orchestrating The Apocalypse a unique sound and vibe. This whole album I feel should be listened to as a single piece, and I gather that is also how the band approached its writing and recording. So here it is! I am also very pleased that Warfather are making a follow-up to this album presumably as we speak with Steve Tucker's Morbid Angel compatriot Erik Rutan! So that should be awesome!!!