"Immortal Rights" is written by Morbid Angel frontman Trey Azagthoth and bassist/vocalist David Vincent. As the first track on their first released studio album, this song was the world's introduction to Morbid Angel and most people's introduction to the then-new genre of death metal. Both guitarist Richard Brunelle and David Vincent cite this song as their favorite from the whole album. But Vincent comments that he likes all the album's songs equally, but you can't do every song from every album when you do a live set, since "people would be bleeding after four or five hours."
In the book Precious Metal: Decibel Presents the Stories Behind 25 Extreme Metal Masterpieces, David Vincent also mentions that "Immortal Rights" also had a little extra something in the ingredients: "There was tons of pot smoking during the writing of that song. I can't say that I really smoke that much anymore, but when we were doing these records, we were all constantly smoking pot."
Examining the cover art for Altars of Madness, you might recognize the artwork of British illustrator Dan Seagrave. David Vincent says that he basically plucked the cover piece from Seagrave's portfolio, when he flew to England to deliver the masters. To this day, many death metal fans sport tattoos from the faces shown in this illustration. Bands whose albums Seagrave has provided cover art for literally run the alphabet from Benediction to Warbringer. Speaking of the alphabet, Morbid Angel always releases their albums titled in alphabetical order.
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