Morgoth - Resurrection Absurd (1989)^{Release ID: 7499}

Given the aggressive nature of German thrash metal it was only a matter of time before the Germans turned their hand to death metal and I believe that Morgoth's Resurrection Absurd was the first Teutonic death metal release, put out by Century Media in November of '89 as a 12" EP. The sound is occasionally a bit muffled and so the faster parts do become a bit messy at points (the closing part of the instrumental The Afterthought, for example). Morgoth seem to be quite strongly influenced by Death and Resurrection Absurd bears a strong resemblance to Scream Bloody Gore, to the extent that vocalist Marc Grewe is virtually indistinguishable from Chuck Schuldiner. I don't think that Morgoth do too much special here and their slavish reproduction of Death's early sound is a bit predictable. That said, there are glimpses of promise, the track that opens side two, Selected Killing, is a bit more ambitious and has a nice, ominous break in the middle with a bit of a doom-ridden build to the climactic run-in and is the stand-out track for me.

This is by no means a bad release, but it is patchy in both production, performance and songwriting. I am not at all familiar with Morgoth so I don't know if they took the potential they did show and improved on it on later releases, but maybe I'll find out later. I was vacillating between whether to give this three or 3.5 stars and went with the latter mainly thanks to Selected Killing. Interesting for the fact of being the first German death metal release, but inessential for it's contents I would suggest.