I'll bet you're looking at the above photo and thinking 'Hey, that's Morbid Angel, but where's Dave? Who's the dude on the end with the cascading hair??'. Am I right?
Those of you with short, or long, term memory issues...you know why...may not remember that from 1997 until 2004 the bassist/vocalist position in Morbid Angel was occupied with aplomb by one Steve Tucker, following Diamond Dave Vincent's decision to drag up in a latex minidress and climb inside his wife's purse.
.....I mean, seriously. C'maaaaan, who would YOU rather have fronting the worlds premiere Death Metal band? That 'dude', or THIS dude -
NO. FUCKIN'. CONTEST. Diamond Dave looks like he should go join The Kovenant or somesuch. I certainly blame him for the fact that the forthcoming Morbid Angel single 'Nevermore' will have a fucking Combichrist remix as the B-side. Fuckin' mall goth assclown. Jeepers.
Aaaaaaanyway, Steve Tucker. So, yeah, the dude comes in from one of the gazillion DM bands named Ceremony and totally outclasses Vincent from the get-go. None of that semi-gothic moaning, and none of the ludicrous Crue-esque posturing, just heads-down brutal Death fuckin' Metal.
(Apologies for the cheezorama image above, what did you expect from Youtube?)
See? Brutal as fuck, and check out the lyrics in ancient Sumerian - guturral, terse and barbaric, hell, ALL Death Metal should be rendered thusly.
So, Steve stuck around for two albums , 1998s 'Formulas Fatal To The Flesh' - the opening track of which is above - and 2000s 'Gateways to Annihilation', which is some slow, crawling, sick shit. It goes without saying that they are my two favourite Morbid Angel albums.
In 2001, Tucker left, citing 'personal reasons' and was temporarily replaced by Hate Eternal's Jared Anderson, only to be dragged back kicking and screaming for 2003s disappointing 'Heretic', which is NO-ONE'S favourite Morbid Angel album.
It didn't last, and Tucker left again in 2004, to be replaced by the returning David vincent. Sadly.
Following his time as MORBID ANGEL'S BEST FRONTMAN, Steve ended up fronting terrible ex-death metaller/rawk rejects Lowa, who also featured some dude who was in Nile and two other guys who should know better. Apparently Steve has since come to his senses, quit Lowa acrimoniously, and 'retired from music'. Yeah, right.
He does have ONE last Death metal-related gasp in him though, as he's involved with ex-Mayhem/current Aura noir guitarist Rune Eriksen (AKA Blasphemer) and Cryptopsy drummer/scene traitor Flo Mournier in some kind of 'art' project 'masterminded' by 'artist' and 'graphic designer' Nader Sadek, who appears to be several years late in jumping on the Black Metal bandwagon, according to this rather laughable clip...
KTL this AIN'T.
In memory of this, my favourite period of time in Morbid Angel's history, I've upoladed 'Formulas...' and 'Gateways...' below, just in case you happened to miss 'em, or just plain didn't give 'em the time of day way back when. Download, listen, enjoy...
MAHUMMUHU GAL-GAL ME-GAL-GAL-ZU GA HUL AMAH-USHUMGAL-ANNA ME-GAL-GAL-ZU GA HUL!!!
(Buy it here, loathe as I am to give Earache any business)
my father the forsaken,
the king of blasphemy
(Again, buy it here, from the label who sold Morbid Angel's mastertapes on ebay)
Now that Dave's back in the leather pants at the front of the stage, let's try to remember Steve Tucker as he was when he was MORBID ANGEL'S BEST FRONTMAN...
...and not how he was when last seen...
(Incidentally, what IS it with people who leave Morbid Angel becoming an embarrassment? I mean, Dave Vincent becomes publicly pussy-whipped - LITERALLY -, Steve Tucker turns into some dude who looked like he wasn't good enough to be in Creed, and Richard Brunelle goes....well....a bit mental...check out the bands he likes. Not good. At all.)
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