With three of the members, from the classic line-up returning: Pat Lind on vox, Jim Fergades/Jay Visser – guitars you cannot go wrong.  Throw in Bob Zabel on bass and DJ Bagemehl on drums and you know the band has not missed a step.  I would always lump Morbid Saint into somewhat of the Sadus thrash metal category, whereas, the thrash can become pretty extreme and teetering a bit on the death metal side, but not so much that I would call them death/thrash.  The fact that Pat returns on vocals is huge because I cannot imagine Morbid Saint without his signature raspy and intense vocals.  One only needs to look at the album cover of the metalhead lopping heads and bodies in half to realize Morbid Saint is back to brutalize us with another heaping of brutal thrash metal.

“Rise from the Ashes” begins without an intro and immediately gets into the metal with a nice fast galloping speed and Lind’s vocals sound scorching.  Intense double bass over the 40-second mark, shows there is an added intensity herein.  The guitar riffing is razor-sharp and will slice and dice your head in half.  Excellent guitar solos and some growls and the double bass at the two-minute mark is stupid fast.  Triggered I would assume – they sound too perfect.  This opening song has so many fist-banging mania moments which are enough to collapse skulls in 0.0 seconds.

Hey let’s skip around a bit.  If you have a song titled “Fuck Them All”, I am all about talking about that and it’s the longest song on the album at 5.36 minutes.  The song has a nice gallop, not as fast as the opening song, but it thrashes pretty awesome.  There are some excellent slowdowns on this song.  Excellent rhythm section on this song, with some cool drum rolls and excellent raspy vocals.

“Burn Pit” opens with excellent guitar melodies.  The scorching vocal choruses accompany the heavy thrash metal great and this has a lot of catchy guitar riffing this song is pretty darn heavy and there are some definite nods to classic Slayer with some of the guitar tone, therefore I appreciate this song very much.  I love how the song title is shouted multiple times and then we get the sounds of burning embers at various points to add to the ambience and atmosphere of the song.  Don’t sleep on the title track which has the catchiest guitar riffing, on the entire album.  The main riff is embedded in my cerebellum.

“Fear Incarnate” messed me up while listening to this song when I was driving to work.  The intro sounds like a post-apocalyptic situation taking place in a city and there are various sounds of people screaming, noises and cars honking their horns.  On my car stereo, I thought people were honking their horns at me, that is how real the sounds were.  So before I started rolling down my window and flipping everyone off I payed closer attention to the song and restarted it from the beginning and I was like, Morbid Saint – you clever bastards!  This song has some heavier and slower grooves which capture the heaviness more.  The song gets into a higher velocity speed, towards the end with some chaotic guitar soloing going on – a truly vicious number.

Swallowed by Hell is the best-sounding Morbid Saint album to date and harnesses the classic sound of the band, which garnered them a cult underground following, after their 1990 classic debut.  I love this album – it’s excellent well-played thrash metal, with a penchant for heaviness and catchiness.  The signature trademarks are all there and Morbid Saint – Welcome Back to Hell – this album rules!

Spectrum of Death is unbridled and frenzied death/thrash aggression that also, maybe not the tightest music, still to this day, sounds incredibly fresh.  Every song a damn classic.  “Assassin” is spectacular with the slow groove that picks up the pace with a speed that was quite commonplace at the time it was released, in 1990, and that today would be considered a classic death/thrash beat.  Also some incredibly well done bass guitar strumming going on.  Let’s not forget this album was also produced by Eric Greif, who was the manager for Death.  Another key point worth mentioning is this album was one of the best produced death/thrash albums at that time, with a production 1/2 the cost of the bigger named acts, at the time, yet sounding much better than those albums.  The double bass drums also were incredibly organic, natural and added to the layers of heaviness.  Spectrum of Death was originally called Lock up your Children, but was eventually changed.  “Beyond the Gates of Hell”, with the cool drum intro ripping into a Kerry King like guitar solo with punishing double bass at rumbling mid paced bone crushing speed was enough to have cities collapse worldwide and cause riots.  The insanely catchy guitar riff at the 1.10 part with the guitar melody and ripping vocals is some of the most classic well done death metal moments for that time period, as well as in general.  Also on the first disc is The Black Tape ’92, which contains songs that would eventually make up the second Morbid Saint album, which was never officially released until  2015.

Disc 2 is the Destruction System album, so while it was recorded, soon after Spectrum of Death, really is just as awesome as the debut album.  Destruction System also had a more prominent bass guitar sound on it and really added even more bottom end to the rhythm section.  May have had something to do with Gary Beimel on bass, who replaced Tony Paletti, from Spectrum of Death.  “Living Misery” is definitely a highlight, for me.  The killer beginning drums, double bass, before going into what would become known as the Morbid Saint killer face melting groove section.  The title track is also one of the finest songs Morbid Saint.  Brutal, catchy, awesome vocals/chorus and beginning of the tune, has an industrial feel to it-incredible.  Destruction System was also tighter, musically, but I still could never figure out which I liked better.  So chalk the motherfucker up to a tie.  Rounding out disc 2 are 4 songs recorded between 2010-2011.   Incredible material, for a band who just reformed, around that time.  It would be a shame if Morbid Saint never records another album, since these guys still have the goods to deliver, and these 4 songs, which I had never heard before, are godly.

Under the watchful remastering eye of Patrick W. Engel, all the material has been brightened up a bit, restored, made louder, but never detracting from the original killer recordings.  This guy rocks and has been responsible for remastering much of Century Media’s reissues, over the years.  He is one of the best out there in preserving the original recording sounds, but remastering them so that the true nuances, that may have been buried, in the past, are resurrected to deliver some much needed punishment.   Century Media did a nice job with a huge booklet with vintage photos, flyers, lyrics and updated interview & added pics/photos under the cd trays.  Incredible read and you will learn a lot about Morbid Saint and see the various incarnations of their band logo too.  I would have liked them to include the cover art of Destructive System; but that was left out.  Also the digipak front cover of Spectrum of Death, I think I may have preferred to have the album cover not being glued on separate paper and then coated with the special clear protectarent, and placed on the digipak.  Over time this separate piece of material could come unglued, it should have just been the entire front of the digipak, as the cover.  This front cover, while looking exceptional, still, the layout was rushed.  Also; c’mon Century Media next time you include a sticker on the front of a reissue, can you make it larger?  This is like the smallest fuckin reissue sticker I have ever seen & I had to take my goddamned readers out to read it, lol.

Folks, this limited run pressing of Morbid Saint’s material is what you need and should own.  I imagine maybe 1000, possibly 2000 of these are being pressed.  So this is the edition you must have.  Despite some of my minor quibbling about certain cosmetic aspects of this, this is the best reissue for 2016, nothing will top it.  Excellent and very respectful to Morbid Saint, one of the best and criminally overlooked death/thrash bands ever.