It was Sunday, March 26, and I did not yet know it was Trey Azagthoth's birthday. I only knew I would not be attending the concert of his influential Florida death-metal band, Morbid Angel, at the Regent. I was certainly not about to guess that long ago, like Nostradamus, Morbid Angel had accidentally predicted that a shooter would commit mayhem at a Nashville church the next day.
As much as I admired Azagthoth's insane guitar playing, I did not feel moved to drag my ancient bones downtown late at night on the Lord's Day amid all that metal Satanism. A surprisingly thick shroud of discouragement even formed around the notion. Instead, I went online and spotted several recent YouTube postings of live performances from Morbid Angel's current "Tour of Terror," celebrating 40 years of death-metal carnage and pagan ritual. I resolved to spend all Monday absorbing decades of Trey Azagthoth's brilliance, both onstage and in the studio.
Though much of the new handheld live video sounded bad, or the camera operator didn't know whose band it was, this clip of "Rapture" from March 18 in Dallas containing three concise solos (Trey on right) demonstrated that Azagthoth still keeps his grip. Tapping the frets, twiddling ridiculously fast and high, divebombing with the whammy bar, whooshing nasty sound effects, riffing with deadly evil, he holds command everywhere, but what has really set him apart over the years is his choice of notes, which often seem to make no sense at all except in the precise context where he's spattering them. Azagthoth has created his own language.
Which is what exiles everywhere do, because language is power, even if mainly among one's fellow exiles. The root language is metal, and Morbid Angel shares a branch of the primal death-metal tree not only with California's Slayer but with fellow Floridians such as Death, Obituary and Atheist. Marilyn Manson launched his career in Florida. And the state has attracted a few deadly political figures one could name.
Satan, the ultimate exile, comes with the territory of most death metal, which has enrolled few class valedictorians. You call that heaven? Give me hell. You call this life? Then give me death.
I took a lunch break from Morbid Angel and switched on CNN, where I was confronted with another morbid angel. A transgender shooter had killed three children and three adults at a Nashville Presbyterian Church school, and then had been killed by police.
The shooter, age 28, had once unwillingly attended the K-6 school, which holds mandatory Bible classes twice a week. The school's website doesn't outline its approach to transgender issues, though its mission statement includes, "Students are free to be children -- they can feel fully and safely known by our faculty." Three weeks before the slayings, Tennessee had passed bans on gender-affirming education and drag shows. (For perspective, 157 years previous to the date of the shootings, President Andrew Johnson vetoed the Civil Rights Act, intended to provide citizenship to anyone, especially enslaved persons, born in the USA; nevertheless it became the 14th Amendment two years later, Tennessee being the third state to ratify it.)
Holding down my lunch and returning to Morbid Angel, I was more impressed by Azagthoth's wrath and intensity than ever, especially when he was supported by the incessant but musical kick drums of Pete Sandoval and the actually comprehensible dark bark of David Vincent, who wrote most of the early lyrics. Try for example "Dawn of the Angry", which begins "Finger on the trigger" and rants about hatred for enemies and admiration for minutemen and sovereigns -- and this is 1995! (Poetic role/game playing perhaps.) Want to watch a Morbid video featuring dismembered children devoured by an alien slime god? Might have to be in the mood.
As I soaked up the first three Morbid Angel albums beginning with "Altars of Madness," I was compelled to take notice of song titles such as "Bleed for the Devil" and especially "Chapel of Ghouls" -- these Angels ain't much for churchgoing. But things turned especially squirmy when I waded into Morbid Angel's most popular album, the one that catapulted them over the top; its 30th anniversary arrives in June. Naturally I had to zero in on the tracks "Vengeance Is Mine" and "Blood on My Hands." The title of the record is "Covenant." And the name of the Nashville school is Covenant.
So now it made sense. It had all been prophesied! David Vincent and Trey Azagthoth are prophets!
NO, IT DIDN'T MAKE SENSE, IT DIDN'T MAKE ANY SENSE AT ALL. But this was what I was reduced to, trying again and again and again to understand the same goddamned thing, done with the same guns, motivated by different grudges, in different places, by different people who were somehow all the same exile.
This is what I'm reduced to.