Sepultura

Bestial Devastation (1985) 

Sepultura's work on Bestial Devastation resembles waves crashing into a shore, in the fact that each riff is followed, inevitably by another just as forceful or crushing. They keep coming endlessly. The energy and momentum never ceases. A theme is established very early on in each song with the opening riffs, and it is added to, chopped up, and dismantled throughout the song. The main theme is displayed in varying lights, as the riffs keep coming, endlessly crashing into the ears of the listener. Each wave, or reincarnation, adds another layer or dimension to the sound, and we are inevitably overwhelmed with sufferance and death. This album contains the beginnings of 'microsymphonies', something that Massacra would perfect on their Final Holocuast album some four years later. The songs are short, ripping pieces, almost shrapnel like in their precision. The production is raw and primitive, even by mid 80s standards, but it is fitting for such an undertaking.

Morbid Visions (1986)

Sepultura refine their sound, giving their melodic components more room to breath, through more repetition in their phrasing. This creates more focused, and ordered 'mirco-symphonies', without compromising the essential facets of their sound that made a devastating force. Morbid Visions sees them strike a greater balance between blistering sections (intensity) and slower, mid-paced morbidity. They also expand their song format slightly, but without it being a detriment to their renowned concision in message from their first EP offering.

Schizophrenia (1987)

Schizophrenia continued the relentlessly violent and uncompromising style that Sepultura had been developing on their earlier releases. On a surface level it is what you would expect from them: dark, nasty and full of the foreboding of death. However, surprisingly for a band that often sounds so barbaric, there is also a great deal of control and deliberation in their song-writing. There is more of a focus on Thrash Metal on this release, and less of the furious death metal tremolo riffing and occult bent of Morbid Visions. It is also a bit less rough around the edges – in other words there has been some trade-off for that raw evilness for a higher level of aspiration in the song-structures.

Where this album does succeed is the masterful way that momentum is created and maintained throughout each song. Sepultura were great on this album at building momentum over long sections, and then they would either detonate this energy with crushing mid-section riffs or melodic outbursts, or in some cases deftly transition this energy to a whole new set of ideas altogether. The band does this whilst using fairly large quantities of riffs, with the most impressive aspect of this being that the quality is very consistent throughout. The song-structures are also fairly complicated and there is a certain sophistication in the song-writing, especially in the way that there are multiple sections that ebb and flow through most songs. This album stands tall amongst those of the Speed/Thrash Metal albums that aimed for a more complicated approach because the song-writing is focused and is full of recognisable movement and progression (whereas lesser bands failed to incorporate multiple ideas and ended up with a mish-mash of riffs that were interchangeable with each other and made no sense as a whole).

Beneath the Remains (1989)

Beneath the Remains takes lessons learnt from Slayer (and Sepultura's own previous work) in combining the intent of speed metal (focus on the "riff"), with the emerging death metal scene that they helped influence (particularly in the album's ability to transfer and build energy seamlessly within frenetic song structures). The album is however, more in-ward looking than most of its contemporaries, often preferring matters of the soul to war and politics. The result is an enthusiastic album that deconstructs human weaknesses (fear of death, morality) and stands them on their head to create an exuberant and forceful emotive experience based on over-coming these. A journey to build strength in the inner-self.