Blessed Are the Sick

After the debut Altars of Madness the band spent close to two years on the road. It began with the Grindcrusher tour of Britain and Europe in November 1989 alongside Napalm Death, Carcass and Bolt Thrower, worked across North America, and finished with Brazilian dates in April 1991. This album was made at Morrisound Recording in Florida in the gaps between those tours. There are fast passages, but the record as a whole is distinctly slower than its predecessor. Trey Azagthoth, who writes the music, dedicated it to Mozart, and the debt to classical music surfaces repeatedly. Tracks nine, ten and twelve are re-recordings of material from the 1986 demo Abominations of Desolation. The words set out Azagthoth's own religious ideas, and his lead playing has been compared to Eddie Van Halen's. The sleeve reproduces Jean Delville's painting Les Trésors de Satan. In 2009 the album was reissued as a DualDisc digipak whose DVD side carries an hour-long documentary. The running order here is the original's as printed.