Sepultura - Morbid Visions (1986)^{Release ID: 531}

Weak production and sloppy performances taint an otherwise enjoyable and pioneering death / thrash album.

The success of Sepultura’s Bestial Devastation EP in 1985 had convinced the band that despite their very young ages (Max and Paulo were sixteen and Igor was only 15), they were ready to unleash their debut full length album onto the world. With no changes in line-up, they once again entered Estudio Vice Versa in August 1986, where they spent a total of seven days recording what would become Morbid Visions. After the raw and nasty production quality of Bestial Devastation, the guys decided that this time they would try to clean things up a little bit. In hindsight, this was a not a particularly good idea, as the equipment they were using just wasn’t capable of producing a strong death metal sound with clarity, and they would have been far better off just going with the rough yet forceful approach that made the EP so enjoyable. Of course it didn’t help that the band never bothered to tune their guitars, and this inexperience combined with the rushed nature of the recording resulted in an album almost completely void of authority. Still, once you accept the production issues, there is certainly some decent and pioneering death metal (only Possessed had released anything resembling death metal at this early stage) to be found on Morbid Visions.

Released on the 10th of November, 1986 on Cogumelo Records, the original vinyl pressing featured the first movement of Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana as an intro. This little overture was noticeably absent from the cassette and CD versions released shortly afterwards by Roadracer, presumably due to breaches of copyright. Whether it’s present or not really doesn’t make all that much difference to the album, as it was in no way integrated into the opening title track. What you hear on that first track is pretty much what you get for the next thirty odd minutes, being enthusiastically performed thrashy death metal. The issues with the production quality and musicianship are evident pretty much immediately, with the sound just not kicking your ass the way it should. The guitars get nowhere near the attention that the drums and vocals do, which is not ideal given the riff focus that Sepultura was going for. Igor’s drumming occasionally displays the potential we now know he possessed, but it’s also fairly sloppy which undoubtedly has something to do with the hasty recording duration. Max’s vocals are gruff and energetic throughout, but his high speed multi-syllable outbursts become grating before long. I assume he did it this way so he could reproduce them live, as he struggled to play guitar and sing at the same time.

The lyrics are hysterical and it’s obvious that Max still lacked any capacity for the English language. Still fascinated with the satanic themes that were inspired by Venom and Celtic Frost, they do help in giving Morbid Visions that kult feel that somehow makes albums that really aren’t that good entertaining for us metal fans. I think Show Me the Wrath takes the cake with “Son of evil, he is insane manic butcher, he is feared, he doesn’t have religion, killing is what he wants to, false and fools, he there is to torture”. That be brilliant stuff! As much as I’ve just torn Morbid Visions to shreds over the last paragraph and a bit, there’s no doubt that Sepultura deserve some credit for the role they played in the early development of death metal, and there are still some notable moments to be found such as the title track and the classic Troops of Doom that would give the band the momentum they needed to go on to much bigger and better things. There’s certainly no doubting the commitment and passion that these teenagers put into Morbid Visions, and while I might not listen to it much these days (I’m more likely to reach for Bestial Devastation) due to the production and its overall primitive form, it holds an important place in the development of one of metal’s most remarkable bands.

The version of Morbid Visions I have been listening to also has the Bestial Devastation tracks from the 1985 split with Overdose so I thought I would kill two birds with one stone and cover both here. As much as I am a huge fan of the four albums from Schizophrenia onwards, I have never even listened to these earlier releases before now... and wow, what a treat they are! It is amazing to think that the Cavalera brothers were mere teenagers at the time, but the fearlessness of youth, I suspect, enabled them to produce a brace of releases that pushed the envelope of what was then considered extreme in the metal world.

First off, Max has got the best iteration of the death growl heard up to this point, being deeper and gruffer than most of the other frontmen of the time who's vocals still remained very much in the Tom Araya / Mille Petrozza barking style. The playing is a bit messy and some of the transitions aren't as smooth as people would like, but hell, they were still learning their craft and yet mananged to produce a fireball of furious riffing and incendiary soloing that gives a real insight into just how fucking awesome and ahead of the curve early Sepultura were. I am not a person who is impressed by flashy showmanship or technical wizardry (in fact, quite the opposite) so I may be better disposed to such an obviously flawed release as Morbid Visions because, for me, it succeeds by sheer force of will and energy in presenting something that is just so damn exciting I can't help but love it. This is heartfelt metal from a band of youngsters in it solely for the love of metal at this point and that ethos shines through really brightly on this debut album. It seems strange that this is never mentioned much in the conversation about early death metal releases because there seems to be plenty here that qualifies - Mayhem and War both sound very death metal to me and as a whole I would venture it is more death metal adjacent than Possessed's Seven Churches is. The production isn't great, the drums seem to be pushed too far to the fore, sometimes at the expense of the guitar and there isn't much by way of bottom end but, for me, this is only a minor issue and certainly isn't a deal breaker as far as future listening potential goes.

Bestial Devastations consists of an intro and four tracks, again the production leaves a lot to be desired (sounding a bit like Seven Churches production-wise) and the performance could be tighter, but all the tracks have great riffs and an infectious energy that true metal heads should find difficult to ignore. Both the split and debut full-length marked Sepultura out as a band who would most likely go places and were pretty extreme-sounding for 1986 and are deserving of being part of the conversation surrounding the development of death metal in the 1980s.