MORBID SAINT
PAT LIND
Morbid Saint from Sheboygan, Wisconsin kept thrashing through the eighties but it wasn't until 1990 the band got around to release their first album called Spectrum of Death on the Mexican label Avanzada. It was a superb debut and it is considered a classic in the genre by many thrashers including myself. Two years later Morbid Saint started the work on the follow-up but things happened and the album wasn't finished. Shortly thereafter Morbid Saint disbanded. Now fifteen years later Morbid Saint is back and they're gigging all over the world again and there is a new album in the making. I have spoken with Morbid Saint's vocalist Pat Lind.
First of all I must say that I think Spectrum of Death is one of the best thrash metal albums of all time. It had everything. I should almost be mad at you guys because you disbanded in the early nineties ;)
Thanks man
Morbid Saint
We can begin with a small presentation of your band...
Morbid Saint is made up of four members - I’m Pat Lind, the vocalist, Jay Visser is on guitar, and our newer members are Bob Zabel on bass and Randy Wall on drums.
You've been away for over twenty years, what made you do a comeback? and where have you been all these years?
We were around, just living our normal lives. In the back of my mind I always hoped we’d get the opportunity to do something again with the Morbid Saint name and then Jay approached me about doing a project and breathing new life into the Morbid Saint name. We had Randy and Bob who we had worked with before in different bands and were available to work with us on this and everything just fell into place. It seemed to be the right time to get things going again.
I've read on your website that a new album is in the making, tell me everything there is to know about it. When will it be released? And what label will it be released on? How far have you come with the recordings of it? Have you decided a title for it? Artwork?
We’ve definitely been in writing mode but it’s a slow going process. We’d like to release another full length album. Right now we have a few songs finished and a few in the works – we’re approaching the halfway point and haven’t even thought about labels, artwork or even studios yet. We’re just going to focus on getting the songs done and figure out the rest when the time comes.
Has Morbid Saint's sound changed or matured? Or are you heading for that Spectrum of Death-sound?
Really, with the time that has past, we didn’t go into this with the preconceived notion of doing things the same or doing it differently. It’s always been that we sit down and whatever comes out naturally, we let it flow. Morbid Saint is obviously built around a lot of aggression and speed so those same elements are still there but I’d like to think it has developed as well.
What bands had the biggest influence on Morbid Saint's sound?
For myself as far as vocals go, this is just what came out when I started screaming. I know a lot of people say I sound like Mille and I did listen to Kreator for a good chunk of my younger days, but I’ve had musical influences not reflected in my vocals at all. I think as a whole though, we’re influenced by Slayer and other extreme late 80s, early 90’s thrash.
You released Spectrum of Death on the Mexican label Avanzada Metalica, how come you didn't end up on any of the big metal labels? Did Avanzada promote your band enough?
Avanzada was the only label that even approached us, so for me to say whether they did a good job/bad job is irrelevant because we were happy to have a deal. Anything they did for us was better than any other opportunity we had, so its hard to say anything negative. Of course it would have been great to get more exposure and see how things could have rolled a little differently maybe, but the past is the past.
Morbid Saint Live
Do you feel pressure now when your old stuff is considered legendary?
Well, we put pressure on ourselves I think because we always want to not only put out the best product we can but to also take steps forward and top what we’ve done previously. So there’s some pressure in that, but it’s also motivation.
Your supposedly second album Destruction System was recorded but only released as a demo? What happened there? Why wasn't it released as a LP?
We went into a professional studio & were going to release that on Grindcore. I’m not sure exactly what happened, but the funding dried up and we were unable to proceed. I’m not sure if that was when the label went under, but if not, it was soon after. It ended up unfinished and years later we finally got the raw tracks that we did and we re-mastered it a bit. But it wasn’t really a demo, it was supposed to be a full length album & was partially done, so it sounds like a studio demo that was never mixed, just never finished. Jay, in his home studio, tried to re-work the tracks and re-master it and that’s the best sounding Destruction System that’s out there, on our Thrashaholic three disc set.
You're back touring the world again, how has it been being back in the game?
Touring the world again would imply that we’ve toured it once before, but really the opportunities coming our way now are far & beyond what we got offered in our earlier days, which was really just local Midwestern US shows. But yeah, it’s exciting to be invited to different countries, to be playing the big festivals like Keep it True and Neurotic Deathfest, trips to Mexico, a pending trip to China – lots of exciting stuff on the table so it’s a very good place for Morbid Saint to be right now.
You released a three CD box in 2012, tell us more about it.
One disc has all of Spectrum of Death, one has all of Destruction System re-mastered and the 3rd disc is a live dvd of a show we played in 1991 in Racine, WI. It has multi camera views and some visual effects, so it’s a cool video. Then there’s four bonus tracks on top of our recorded tracks, so it’s pretty much a compilation of everything we’ve done pre-2011 and you get it directly from us by shooting us an email or a message on facebook.
What's the highlight of your career?
So far, the highlight for me was our trip to Europe. We had two large fests to kick off and end the tour with & a bunch of cool shows in between. From Germany, Greece, Italy, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands. The people we met, the things we saw, the shows we played, – it was a great, great time.
Do you think that the thrash metal scene has changed during all these years?
Well I’m sure it probably has – a lot of the times I stick to the old school stuff and am oblivious to what’s going on in the scene, but now that I live in Chicago I’ve been catching more shows and just lately getting re-acclimated to what’s going on with the new bands and some of the bands that have been around that I missed.
What's your plans for the near future?
We have a pretty solid summer of shows and we really want to keep writing songs. We just try to get in as much as we can around our everyday lives.
Have you got any funny story to tell, if anything weird has happened while touring or so?
It’s not really funny, but when we were in Italy, a guy in the band that brought us let us stay in his grandmother’s apartment which turned out to be haunted, so that was an experience. Books had fallen off a chair while we were there, it was all religious and had a weird vibe and the memorabilia was so old and interesting that Randy went around taking random pics of things. When we got home he was going through his photos and one particular pic he took was in the grandmother’s bedroom aimed at the dresser. We didn’t see it at the time but in the picture there handprints on the dresser mirror that looked to be dragging downwards – it was creepy as hell that they only showed up in a pic that we looked at weeks later.
Any last words for our readers?
Go to shows, keep your local scene alive, pick up a Morbid Saint album and if you already have one, thanks for your support.
Stay Morbid \m/
By/Ruthless
(20-05-2014)
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