Songfacts®:

• "Lord of All Fevers & Plague" was written by Morbid Angel frontman Trey Azagthoth. Decibel magazine ranks him the #1 death metal guitarist, and British author and music biographer Joel McIver ranks him at #7 for best metal guitarists.
  Trey Azagthoth was actually born George Emmanuel III in Bellingham, Washington. His choice of stage name is obviously a nod to both death metal style and his love of H. P. Lovecraft. "Lord of All Fevers & Plague" is very much a quintessential Azagthoth piece, demonstrating his electrifying guitar work, snarling vocals, and occult lyrics.
  In the book Precious Metal: Decibel Presents the Stories Behind 25 Extreme Metal Masterpieces, Azagthoth explains that this song "...is straight Necronomicon incantations. I was really super into Lovecraft at the time, and a lot of people attribute the Necronomicon to him, but his whole doctrine of the Cthulhu mythos is, you know, some of the names are spelled or pronounced a little differently, but it's the same 'Unspeakable Ones, the Ancient Ones, the Old Ones' - there's a lot of parallelism there. I read a lot, and I'd always been into the occult, even from an early age."
• Both Azagthoth and Morbid Angel guitarist Richard Brunelle say that the guitar solos were mostly worked out beforehand. However, they tend to evolve their style through subsequent albums and live performances of each song, to the point where it may be difficult to recall the style they did Altars of Madness in. Azagthoth says, "Nowadays, 'Lord of All Fevers & Plague' has one solo with all of this really cool tapping across a big three-octave scale. Back then, Richard actually played that solo spot on the record."
• While the group has since wandered away from pure occult themes to more mythical themes, their groundbreaking 1992 hit "God of Emptiness" calls Christianity a flat-out false teaching. Of course, you remember it from Beavis and Butthead.
  What goes best with all this morbidity, occultism, and sweat-flinging metal badassery? When Azagthoth's non-music interests include anime; he's a big fan of Sailor Moon, a sweet little series about magical schoolgirls in cute school uniforms who are accompanied by talking cats. Isn't that adorable?