You think so? I personally think the only thing they left behind were the obvious Mike Browning bits (the cheesy King Diamondesque keys that just double the guitar lines at randomly selected intervals), and those added nothing and subtracted much anyway. Blessed are the Sick maximizes everything that is best about Morbid Angel (the instinct for weird, disconcerting, serpentine melody, a classically refined sense of pacing and construction and surgical rhythmic precision) while avoiding the weaknesses that crop up from time to time on their other albums (self-indulgence, a tendency to fall into formulaic ruts and songs that can become to bloated for full coherence).
Honestly, the only thing I can say for the Altars... mix is that it is a little louder than Blessed are the Sick. The latter has a more robust bottom end and a crisper distortion texture that better highlights the heft and precision of the music. I couldn't care less about drum sound: drums are there to keep time and shade the edges of rhythm, there's absolutely no reason for them to be "interesting."
I definitely think so. To me
Altars of Madness is a far more engaging, captivating listen. Part of that is perhaps the aggression but I think the songs are better also. And I forgot to mention this earlier but I prefer David Vincent's vocals on
Altars over those of later albums.
And production, unfortunately, is something that I cannot force my ears to ignore even though I wish I could. When comparing the two albums I must point out the difference in production. I wouldn't say the production on
Blessed is terrible, but definitely a major step down. It all sounds rather tinny to me, and the sound of drums is something I really enjoy listening to so it's better when they sound great.
Regarding the keyboards on
Altars, I find them to be a nice addition to the album. Like on "Chapel of the Ghouls" for example, I think they compliment the song well. The keyboards on
Blessed I would actually say are cheesy (ie. "Doomsday Celebration" in particular) and I think they are a bit out of place on the album.
I'll mention this too because I think it's applicable here, the reason why I generally prefer most bands' early work, and often a band's debut album to later works, is because after a solid debut, bands will attempt to "perfect" the basic elements of their sound. One can argue that's a good thing but this attempt at refining along with a more sterile production job usually equates to the loss of character and charm that attracted me to the band in the first place.
