Okay, so it was decided that Bestial Devastation and Morbid Visions (Nuclear Blast) were to be plucked from the Sepultura catalog for re-recording by founding members Max and Igor Cavalera. Can we all agree on that? Great. Now legions of fans will pound and holler about “we already have those available on CD and on streaming.” Then the other side of the audience moans about the Cavalera siblings being greedy or some such shit.
And in a way, I can understand where they are coming from. For years now in metal, we’ve had bands re-record existing output to varying degrees of success – see Exodus’ Let There Be Blood or In Flames’ Clayman 2020 – or outfits splintering into two and having to share a classic discography. These days you can catch Morbid Angel or David Vincent’s I Am Morbid. Ditto for Cro-Mags and Cro-Mags JM, at least for a while anyways. But before any of those cases, Sepultura and Soulfly were caught in a similar conundrum for years.
And things only got weirder once Igor and Max buried the hatchet and launched Cavalera Conspiracy. Now the brothers are simply going by their surname and re-issuing Cogumelo treasures under the Nuclear Blast umbrella. The craziest bit of all is that it fucking works.
If you know your vintage era Thrash/Death Metal, Bestial Devastation and Morbid Visions come to mind as tape trading classics. Sure, they were rougher than a sandpaper back rub or stepping on a pile of legos on the way to the bathroom, but it was a bright indication of where some young Brazilians were willing to push to genre towards. Now equipped with some 21st-century studio production and love it’s easy to understand why tracks like ‘Antichrist’ or ‘War’ signaled that thrash was ready for a higher class of warfare.
I believe Kerry King once referred to Sepultura during their late 1980s rise as “Slayer babies” and without a doubt, the Belo Horizonte crew had some Los Angeles and Oakland in their DNA as well as Venom and Bathory, but that doesn’t do a track like ‘Morbid Visions’ any justice. If anything, King realized that as punishing as Reign in Blood was there were other mutants ready to take up the mantle with bangers like ‘Funeral Rites’ and ‘Troops of Doom.’
One aspect that couldn’t be improved upon with a fresh coat of studio paint was the lack of a lead guitar technician like Andreas Kisser whose work would elevate future Sepultura work like Beneath the Remains and Arise into classic territory.
Whatever the real reason for these reinventions is anyone’s guess. Just know that they are as lethal as ever.
Pre-save and pre-order Morbid Visions here: https://
Pre-save and pre-order Bestial Devastation here: https://
9 / 10
HANS LOPEZ