SEPULTURA: Beneath The Remains (THRASH): review / opinion to read on Music Waves

It is with this album that the world discovered Sepultura's four Brazilians, still very young and with terrible English. No one expected them and it wasn't the excellent "Schizophrenia", a previous album which had gone almost unnoticed at the time, which could have given a hint of the success and the phenomenal infatuation that this "Beneath The Remains" aroused. By the end of the 80's the Sepultura name was just beginning to circulate in Europe and the United States. Roadrunner, an independent label then far from the industry we know today, became interested in the group and offered them a 7 album contract.

The recording of "Beneath the Remains" is not the most serene. Roadrunner, who considers the commercial potential of the band very uncertain, takes no risk and limits his investment to the strict minimum. The recording takes place at the Nas Nuvens studio in Rio de Janeiro, considered as one of the best in the country, but not intended to record metal. The band is forced to record only at night, but within two weeks the deal is almost finished. It was without counting on the mixing desk that died on the last day, forcing Max to travel to Tampa to finish recording the vocals.

The result is surprising and the band unrecognizable compared to "Schizophrenia". Where the latter was sometimes laborious, everything here is fluid and spontaneous. The band finally has a sound worthy of its Dark Thrash/Death. Five absolute hits stand out, namely in order of appearance the brutal "Beneath The Remains", the more intimate "Innerself", the "Mass Hypnosis" and "Slaves of Pain" with their captivating melodies, choruses and energy, and finally the furious "Primitive Future" which closes the album. The recipe of this last one will be used for "Infected Voice" on the following album "Arise" which sounds like it, and will also be chosen as the last track.

The speed of the riffs and the rhythms are perfectly matched by the heady melodies written by Andréas Kisser, who displays all his talent as a soloist, a quality that he will strangely refute later, limiting his solos in his compositions... Igor gives us a real demonstration behind his drums, his dynamics, his precision, his variations are exemplary, and he establishes himself as one of the very best metal drummers.

From this album and for a few years to come, the press will not stop comparing or even confronting Sepultura to Slayer, which will often only divide the Thrash public into two very distinct clans. At the arrival, we are in front of a monument of Thrash/Death which seems not to take a wrinkle in spite of the years. - Official website

SEPULTURA

BENEATH THE REMAINS

ROADRUNNER RECORDS

THRASH