Sepultura "Morbid Visions/Bestial Devastation"

Morbid Visions is the debut studio album by Brazilian heavy metal band Sepultura, released on November 10, 1986, by Cogumelo Records. While later albums have a more political edge, Morbid Visions (along with the Bestial Devastation EP) is notable for "Satanic" themes. The band said many lyrics were fashioned after those of Venom and Celtic Frost (note the similarity of the album title to Morbid Tales).

The production of the album is rather poor. In the liner notes of Roadrunner's reissue of the album (which includes the tracks from the EP Bestial Devastation), Cavalera admits that the band neglected to tune their guitars during the sessions. They were only starting to learn English at this point, so they had to translate the lyrics word-for-word using a dictionary. All pre-1992 releases of Morbid Visions featured the first movement of Carl Orff's Carmina Burana ("O Fortuna") as an unnamed introduction. This composition was left off the CD re-release, probably due to copyright issues. This would mark the last appearance of the group's original lead guitarist Jairo T.

Bestial Devastation is an EP by Brazilian heavy metal band Sepultura, released in 1985 through Cogumelo Records. It is their first official release, and originally appeared alongside Overdose's Século XX as a split album. The EP's songs were later released as bonus tracks on the CD version of Morbid Visions.

Because of Sepultura's collective lack of money, most of the instruments used on Bestial Devastation were borrowed from friends and acquaintances.

The vocals on the introductory track "The Curse" were performed by a friend of the band; according to Igor Cavalera:

“ One thing I remember is that we had one of our friends come and do the voice for the intro ('The Curse') because he would do that voice without effects - he was kind of burping in a way. It was funny, so we had him come down and do it in the studio. I don't even remember his name! ”

The band apparently fought with the producer during the recording. In an interview, Igor Cavalera said, "He wanted to clean everything up in the mix and we finally had to play him some records by Venom to show him that bands sounded this way."

Months prior to recording what would eventually become the Bestial Devastation EP, the band decided to switch their lyrics from Portuguese to English. None of the band members knew how to write or speak the language, so they asked their friend Lino to translate their lyrics. An example of Lino's crude translation skills can be seen in one of the verses of the song "Antichrist":

“ Churches will be destroyed
Crosses will be brocken
He's laughing in blasphemy
Like a domination of death. ”

Bestial Devastation was released in December 1985, alongside Overdose's Século XX EP. Over the next few months it sold 8,000 copies. Sepultura's surprising success was partly attributed to the first Rock in Rio, which took place in Rio de Janeiro in January 1985. This music festival's line-up included Whitesnake, AC/DC, Iron Maiden, Queen, Ozzy Osbourne and the Scorpions, and was responsible for Brazil's hard rock/heavy metal boom.

The EP was later reissued by Roadrunner Records on one CD with Morbid Visions in 1997. The reissue included a demo version of the song "Necromancer" that was the first studio recording of the band, and a live version of "Antichrist" from the Chaos A.D. tour, re-written as "Anticop".