Before Sepultura became one of the biggest names in Brazilian metal, four teenagers tried to make the ugliest and worst extreme metal they could. Their first album “Morbid Visions” was released on November 10, 1986 on Cogumelo Records.
And this album is so far from ‘raw’, it isn’t funny. The music has a wild underground feel to it. The guitars sound gritty and the drums hi hard. There was no fancy sound or production. They were young, inexperienced and clearly didn’t care about playing it safe.
But some of the stories behind this album are just as crazy as the music.
They Forgot to Tune Their Guitars!
Yes, really. One of the most famous stories about “Morbid Visions” is that the band recorded the guitars without properly tuning them.
Max Cavalera later admitted that the members were only 16 or 17 years old, had almost no studio experience and were working against the clock. They had just two days to record the guitar tracks, and apparently nobody checked the tuning from the night before.
They simply pressed record and went for it.
That might explain some of the strange, rough sound of the album. It’s not exactly a production mistake you hear every day, but it became part of the legend of “Morbid Visions”.
English Lessons, Sepultura Style
The band didn’t speak much English back then, but they wanted their lyrics to have that dark, extreme metal feeling they heard in bands like Venom and Celtic Frost.
So what did they do? They wrote the lyrics in Portuguese and translated them word-for-word using a dictionary.
The result was some pretty broken English, full of Satanic imagery, horror and apocalyptic themes. It wasn’t perfect, but that wasn’t the point. They wanted the lyrics to sound evil, and they were learning as they went.
The Cover Artist Had a Different Day Job
That hellish cover art wasn’t created by some famous metal illustrator.
Igor Cavalera revealed that it was made by a friend named Alex, whose usual job was painting cars with an airbrush. The band gave him their ideas, and he used those automotive painting techniques to create the artwork.
Not your typical album-cover story, but it fits the DIY spirit of the record perfectly.
The Missing “O Fortuna” Intro
If you have an early vinyl pressing of “Morbid Visions”, there’s something you might notice before the music starts.
The original vinyl opened with an uncredited sample of “O Fortuna”, from Carl Orff’s “Carmina Burana”. It gave the album an even more dramatic and ominous beginning.
But the intro didn’t survive on later CD re-releases. The piece had been used without permission, so it was removed because of copyright issues.
A little piece of history that some later listeners never got to hear.
Satanic Lyrics, But Not Exactly Satanists
Unlike the socially and politically charged Sepultura albums that came later, “Morbid Visions” is full of Satanic imagery, occult references and horror themes.
Max and Igor later admitted that they weren’t actually believers in the occult. They were inspired by the shock value and dark atmosphere of early extreme metal bands like Venom and Celtic Frost.
Even the album title had a connection to Celtic Frost’s “Morbid Tales”.
At this point, Sepultura were exploring the darker side of metal and trying to sound as extreme as possible. The political side of the band would come later.
Seven Days in the Studio
The album was recorded and mixed in August 1986 at Estúdio Vice Versa in São Paulo. The whole process took just seven days, with very little money and basic studio equipment.
The production is dry, compressed and rough. You can almost feel the band performing right in front of you with no gap between the instruments and no attempt to make the music sound nice.
The lineup was Max Cavalera on vocals and guitar, Jairo Guedz on lead guitar, Paulo Jr. on bass and Igor Cavalera on drums.
There’s also a little mystery surrounding the bass recordings. Paulo Jr. was credited as the bassist, but Max later claimed that Jairo Guedz actually recorded the bass lines because Paulo hadn’t mastered the instrument yet.
Jairo’s time with Sepultura also ended with this album. He would be replaced by Andreas Kisser before “Schizophrenia”.
From “Morbid Visions” to Cavalera
The album gave us early underground classics like “Morbid Visions” and “Troops of Doom”. It may sound primitive compared to what Sepultura would record later, but that’s part of its character.
Max and Igor Cavalera went back to their roots and re-recorded “Morbid Visions” along with the “Bestial Devastation” EP under the name Cavalera.
Almost four decades after the original release, they were still revisiting the music that started it all.
“Morbid Visions” isn’t a perfect album, and it was never meant to be. It’s loud, rough, sometimes chaotic and full of the energy of a young band discovering just how far they could push extreme metal.
And honestly, that’s exactly why it deserves a place in metal history.
Do you prefer the original raw “Morbid Visions” or the 2023 Cavalera re-recording? And which track still hits hardest: “Morbid Visions” or “Troops of Doom”?
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