Sarcófago: Rotting (1989)

Hmm, I am not really sure why I have not talked much about Sarcófago on this blog.  I have mentioned albums in passing, even had a couple of posts where I talked about their legendary debut I.N.R.I., but I have never actually reviewed one of their albums before.  This seems like an oversight.

Well, today I will be covering the 1989 EP that was at once the follow-up to I.N.R.I. and a turning point for the band.  The band is partly famous for being the group Wagner Antichrist (probably not his real name) created after leaving Sepultura.  He was Sepultura's first singer, though he never appeared on any recordings. 

This album marks a step forward musically by the band.  Where I.N.R.I. was characterized by its raw and primal aggression and fairly simple songwriting, Rotting is a push by the band to expand their musical boundaries.  It is still filthy and grimy blackened thrash metal, but there are more progressive song structures and blazing lead guitar lines with some melody and solos this time around.  Almost every song on this release is over six minutes in length progressing through a number of movements to keep things from getting stale.  None of the songs on the prior release reached that length.  The vocals have not changed, still maintaining that psychotic rasp that they had on the prior release.

Sarcófago has taken a step forward musically on this album, while retaining some of the twisted aggression that marked their debut album.  This EP is still essential to fully grasping the Brazilian extreme metal scene, but less so than the debut. 

The Mist: Phantasmagoria (1989)

Holy shit.  I passed this album over a few times recently because the cover art and the band name just did not quite grab me.  Sure, the art is good, but I have seen this same piece on some Lovecraft books I own and the Cause of Death album from Obituary.  So it just did not do much for me.  But finally, I decided to take a chance on it and I am definitely glad I did.

The Mist is a thrash metal band from Brazil that borders on the much more extreme side of things.  The band fit in well with the early works of Sepultura and Sarcófago.  The band piles on the riffs and drums and is absolutely relentless in their attack.  The riffs are not overly technical, but they hit hard and have a grimy, dirty sound to them that is rather common in the Brazilian extreme metal scene of the 1980's, and is oft-mimicked even today.  Every single song on this album should be a classic.  This is truly impressive extreme thrash metal.

The vocals call to mind early albums by Death.  The singer has the same kind of gruff, sepulchral rasp that Chuck Schuldiner used to great effect.  It is not a true death metal vocal style, but is anything but clean. 

I want to take a short time to talk about the bass.  Bass is often overlooked in metal, except for when it is truly exceptional (such as anything Steve DiGiorgio is in).  This is one of those exceptional cases.  The bass work is absolutely incredible.  It can always be heard and provides a rumbling backbone of the guitar riffs.  There are times it is doing something completely unexpected and the album is all the better for it.  The bass is truly the star of this album.

This album has a bit of a cult following to it and for damn good reason.  This is an exceptional thrash metal album from a scene that put out a number of them.  The Brazilian thrash metal scene has remained largely underground, with the exception of Sepultura, but it should be much better known.  This album fits right in with the giants of that scene.  It is a shame that The Mist did not last long.

Reevaluating Schizophrenia by Sepultura

Yeah, I know I just did a similar post for a Sepultura album earlier this year when I covered Arise.  Well, this album has been kind of begging for a closer look for some time as well. 

As I have mentioned many times on this blog, I loved Sepultura when I was in high school.  But this album eluded me for many years and it was the last of the Max Cavalera albums that I picked up.  It was not until well into my first job after law school that I finally managed to track it down.  And by then, my obsession with Sepultura had long since passed.  So, it just did not make the impact that many of the band's early albums made.  Add to that the kind of crappy production, at least on the copy that I picked up and there were a few reasons why this one really did not make much of an impact.

Schizophrenia is a transition album of sorts.  It is Sepultura's sophomore full-length, arriving just a year after the proto-death metal stomp of Morbid Visions.  That album helped pave the way for not only death metal, but also black metal.  Two years later came Beneath the Remains, which is the band's most straightforward brutal thrash metal album.  So Schizophrenia sort of exists in a state of limbo between the two sounds.  It features the best of both sounds with the raw animal aggression of Morbid Visions and the uncompromising brutality of Beneath the Remains.

In addition, there are some terrific, classic Sepultura songs on this release.  It features pit classics like "Escape to the Void" and "R.I.P. (Rest in Pain)".  But it also contains the spellbinding instrumental "Inquisition Symphony", which remains one of the band's most ambitious songs from their early years.

This album is finally sinking in more these days.  It is a fantastic raw and brutal album and exemplifies the amazing talent that Sepultura had in the early days.  It is a shame that Sepultura spent so much time chasing trends.  A few more albums like this would have been much preferred to the nu-metal direction the band took in the mid 1990's.

Cataloguing My Metal Collection Pt. 82

ARTIST:  Sepultura
ORIGIN:  Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais (Brazil)
TITLE:  Morbid Visions/Bestial Devastation
LABEL:  Cogumelo Records
YEAR:  1986
GENRE:  Thrash/Black/Death Metal
FAVORITE SONG:  "Troops of Doom"
NOTES:  I was in the middle of my massive obsession with Sepultura when I picked this one up.  Of course this one is completely different than anything I had heard from the band to this point.  I was mostly sticking to the groove metal era of the band.  So this was a major difference from what I had been used to up to that point.  It was the most raw and chaotic album I had heard.  So it took me a little while to really get into.  But once I did I was hooked.  This is still my favorite album by the band.  It also features the band's first EP.