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Morbid Visions

I am already familiar with this album and my opinion is still the same: It's barely worth listening to when Hellhammer and Darkness Descends are both easily available. It sounds like a combination of both without being as good as either.

3/5

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The Batlord

Morbid Visions is an album I haven't listen to much, but it def feels like an album that was out of time in 1986, the year of Reign in Blood, Master of Puppets, Darkness Descends, and Peace Sells. This sounds like the prelude to Hell Awaits from a much more raw, unpolished point-of-view, and would have been amazing in 84/85, but if you take it on its own and consider that it was from an isolated Brazilian scene that was just taking off after Venom had just opened the region's eyes from touring (which they did) then it makes much more sense as a 1st wave black metal album.

It's by no means a perfect album, but it is an underrated classic as early black/death metal. All the songs sound the same, and most of them don't really stand out, but it shows Sepultura's promise and some of Max Cavalera's vocals are raw and intense as **** as pre-death metal. This album is certainly a springboard rather than an accomplishment, but it's still plenty of fun, and "Troops of Doom" is still an early thrash metal highlight.

Waiting for Trollheart's review, but I can guess what it will be. Basically I implore him to listen to Arise and Chaos AD before passing judgement on the band, cause if you haven't heard those two albums then you can't really judge them if you've only heard this and their last few albums. This is a good album to hear for its rawness and history, but those two albums are kind of their back-to-back classic albums with two different sounds that have defined their career as a whole. Srsly just don't dismiss Sepultura until you have heard both albums, or at the very least Chaos AD. Just consider this a special request from me that is most definitely not a troll, as even as a moderate fan of Sepultura, those two albums are definitely what you should hear to form an informed opinion on Sep.

#chaosadisthe****

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Trollheart

Morbid Visions/Bestial Devastation - Sepultura

I know everyone is expecting me to hate this. I don't particularly love it, but I can see it as a kind of engaging instance of old school Death Metal, and when you consider that the guys were just learning English, well as a debut it could be worse. The production is **** though - Wiki tells me they forgot to tune their guitars, and it shows - and the whole thing seems very dense and more than a little raw. The vocals are really stilted, but again my friend Wiki reveals that they were actually translating word for word from Brazilian, so that can't have been easy: learning the language as you wrote about it. Got to give them points for effort. They could just have said "**** it: we'll sing in Portuguese" but they didn't.

As Batty says, most of the songs sound the same: I'd be hard pressed to take anything out of this and say "that was different". It all goes mile a minute, and to be perfectly honest, I don't think too much of the guitar work really, though I know they got better. The addition of the EP was really pointless, as it doesn't show any deviation from, or improvement on, the album, so it's basically just another twenty-odd minutes of mediocity to suffer through, and the opening "incantation" is painfully stupid.

Yes, I can certainly see the Black Metal influences here, and if Sepultura were a BM band I think I could forgive them more easily, particularly on a debut, but here it's really just a mess. You have to give them points for trying though, and as I say, they improved with time. I can also see the comparisons to Hell Awaits, though this is more Haunting the Chapel for me, while nowhere near as good.

Oh, and Batty, once again: I HAVE heard Chaos AD, though not the other one. When I get a moment I'll try to listen to it. Still better than Tomb ****ing Mold though.

(It is actually two and a half, but I don't have half cleaver images, and it's better than a two-cleaver rating so...)

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SgtMeowenstein

What's the criteria for this thread? Are you looking for traditional, old school dm, or is the full spectrum acceptable (including offshoot genres or albums influenced by dm)?

SgtMeowenstein

Anyway, here's a suggestion:

MicShazam

I don't think your link works^

At least right now it doesn't.

Trollheart

Now it does.

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MicShazam

Sepultura - Morbid Visions

I feel like this is nothing special at all when compared to a whole bunch of other raw thrash and death offerings from around the same time. There's little to nothing to say about the music itself since it's pretty much the same as what so many others did. A whole heap of fast, stock riffs and straight forward drum pounding. The recording quality is unimpressive but at least the drums sound decent.
The thing that sinks this album below my expectation for this kind of thing is the amateurish vocals. The singer sounds like a teenage dudebro trying very hard to sound hard and aggressive. It sounds forced and silly, not to mention he's completely one-note. He's ridiculously bad on this album. Tom Araya destroyed this guy already on the very first Slayer album. Same could be said of a whole bunch of other death/thrash vocalists of a similar style. Some of the lead guitar playing also sounds rather sloppy. Pretty unimpressive all the way around.
So what's really the thing this album has to offer that I can't get better elsewhere? I'd say it doesn't have anything to offer in particular. They became a much more convincing band later, but this was just weak. Probably seemed more impressive at the time.

3/10

Trollheart

You did read my review, didn't you? They had forgotten to tune their guitars and were just learning to speak English. Maybe cut them a (little) slack?

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MicShazam

I don't think tuned guitars and English lessons would have done much to improve the album to be honest. Just calling it as I hear it. I think it's a pretty weak album.