Earache & new Morbid Angel w/ David Vincent back

Question: Dig, on a drunken night in Boston (lincs) you told me that you had tried eveyrthing to get David Vincent to rejoin Morbid Angel to no avail. Now that the miracle has happened and they are playing new tracks will you be interested in signing them again? Have you caught them live? What do you think - reformed nostalgic rehash or essential cutting edge Death Metal?

Anther thing: with all the Swedish bands worshipping Autopsy, did you ever think about signing them? Was there ever a potential clash of the titans between you and Hammy over their signatures? Did this happen with any other bands, Paradise Lost for example?

Cheers,

Gav From: crushthenazarene@hotmail.com

Answer: Ahhh great memories.. that Muni Waste & The Process gig at Indian Queen pub in Boston (lincs) (not Boston (Mass)!) has gotta be one of my all time faves, as it was the first time since signing them that I witnessed the thrashing speed-metal-punk power of Tha Waste, and also after the show was the first time we'd witnessed the awesome drinking power of The Waste aswell...jeezus, can them boys drink- the entire Earache staff left there annihilated, and we still talk about that show in revered tones in the office to this day.Y'know, there is footage of this infamous early Muni gig on our PS2 Game as bonus level footage, so if you were in the moshpit during the set, you're in a computer game now, Gav!
Anyways, back to the question: Earache has released every note Morbid Angel have ever recorded since their debut in 1989 til 2004, a period spanning the A-B-A-C-D-E-F-G-H 9 albums, 3 seperate record deals and 2 singers.To be honest its mainly the classic game-changing A & B albums which everyone worships, and by the time of the Steve Tucker era albums F-G-H, tho he was an admirable singer, the band were creatively treading water, and also sales were significantly down on the early 90's heyday.
Meanwhile original singer David Vincent (pictured above in Gentitorturers) who sang on the classic early albums A-B-C-D had unexpectedly quit the band in mid-90's to join up with his wife Gen's Industrial-Fetish-Metal troupe Genitorturers who had a sound and look which was quite in vogue with the Rob Zombie/Marilyn Manson mainstream metal crowd which dominated the metal scene during second half of that decade.From that point on, it seemed quite a stretch to imagine David would ever return to the MA fold, especially as industrial metal was on the up-tick and Floridian DM was in the doldrums, so whenever we enquired about a David Vincent comeback through the management that Morbid and Genitorturers shared (all communication had to be directed through manager) the answer was always the same- hell will freeze over first!
Then around about summer 2004 things began to seriously unravel in the Morbid Angel camp- singer Steve Tucker quit after a triumphant Roskilde festival performance- we heard he wanted to relocate from Florida to be with his new girlfriend in Ireland.From the labels point of view, when a replacement singer was not quickly recruited we feared the worst, and guessed the band was at the point of folding.I had to make a snap decision wether to pay significant advances for the next "I" album, so even tho David Vincent was unveiled as the new singer one day before,I didn't fancy paying big money for album number 10 so we parted ways.
Hell did then freeze over!!
Management pulled the band back from the brink i believe by actually persuading David and Trey to work together again.Now free agents, the newly reunited Morbid Angel could seek a lucrative new Major record deal, but 4 years on, the band still remain without a label for its "I" album.
Morbid hit the festival circuit ina big way this year, I did not catch the new shows, but Earache staffers watched em at Hellfest, and declared MA the best band of the entire weekend, so they are in devastating form onstage, which is to be expected, as they are seasoned pro's.As for the new recordings, my opinion is clouded by remembering the heyday of the band so well- I seriously doubt wether they can write a new album to top the first 2 albums, which are bona-fide death metal classics.The fan in me wouldnn't mind doing the new album, but from a business perspective,Earache is not in the market for album number 10 when we have 9 already in the catalog, 2 of which cannot be topped anyway.They have to go somewhere else to get a fresh momentum and different marketing approach.


Regarding Peaceville back in the day, we both started our labels as extreme HC punk/grind/ crossover labels.Sure, we knew each other from gigs,and respected what the other was doing from afar, but Earache was undoutedly leading the way, and as usual we went out on a limb first by signing an extreme USA death metal band in Morbid Angel- this was a major sell-out to the scene police in the Uk HC scene at the time.Peaceville quickly followed us, and snapped up Autopsy.Earache never approached Autopsy.In hindsight,I think we got the better band.
You are right about Paradise Lost-we missed out big time on them. Earache made them an offer for the debut album but for some reason they preferred Hammy's deal.Tho a much smaller operation, I put it down to Peaceville being locally based to them.It really hit home when Gothic came out and sold incredibly well in Germany, it put Peaceville on the map and sealed the success of the label.Hammy recently sold off the Peaceville label to Snapper Music, a re-issues & catalog specialist,and he retired to sunny Spain.