Morbid Angel are a month away from hitting the road with co-headliners Cannibal Corpse on the Decibel Magazine tour 2019. Joining this death metal dream team is Necrot and Blood Incantation. The combined death metal mayhem will surely make this one of the key tours of 2019. Morbid Angel vocalist/bassist Steve Tucker was kind enough to spend a bit of time while prepping for the tour to talk with us.
On the subject of preparation, we asked Steve what the band does to get geared up for a tour like the upcoming Decibel tour. Steve mentioned that the band has a set routine they follow. “Everyone is expected to already be prepared,” said Steve. “About a month before (tour), I start going over the songs on a daily basis, sort of building muscle memory. That way, by the time we get to rehearsal, is pretty much well-rehearsed.” Steve added, “Everyone shows up ready to go.”
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During tour announcements, Steve had mentioned that the band will be going back through their catalog to include older songs as well as new ones from amazing 2017’ album ‘Kingdom’s Disdain’. “Yeah man, we’re doing “Blasphemy”, “Abomination” from Altars, Blessed. We’re doing some stuff from Covenant, I think “Blood on my Hands”. We’re doing things from the new album Kingdom’s Disdain, something from Formulas. We’re pretty much touching all the albums, probably a couple songs or so.”
Delving a bit into the setlist creation process, we asked Steve about how they choose a setlist and if they follow that setlist night after night or go rogue and change it up. Steve said “We always start with way more songs than we end up with. That way if we decide that maybe this song just isn’t feeling right, we can switch songs. I think for this (Decibel tour), we are playing 18 songs or something like that. I think we’ve actually listed 22 songs.” Steve added “We’ve packed as many songs as we can in. There’s not even time for me to announce the songs. I’ll be announcing them as the songs start.”
Morbid Angel and Cannibal Corpse are legendary bands. Morbid Angel is easily one of the most influential bands in death metal ever. We asked Steve if that level of fan and peer attention and expectation ever creates pressure for him or the rest of the band. “Man, to be honest with you, I think that everyone involved in Morbid Angel, not only now, but anyone who’s ever been involved in Morbid Angel has that inner drive to make the songs, the shows, whatever, everything perfect anyway man,” Steve responded. “So I honestly think it’s any pressure bigger than what I apply to myself or what Trey applies to his self.”
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The Decibel tour lasts for just short of a month. We inquired about what Morbid Angel has on tap for the rest of 2019. Steve said “I’m actually myself going to start to write some new music and I think Trey will probably start writing some new music. We’ll probably do a couple more tours through the year. We have some stuff that is being talked about right now, but nothing in concrete. Its been a little bit over a year since the last album came out. I’ve kinda got the urge and desire myself to write some more music.”