SEPULTURA Bestial Devastation is the first outing from this Brazilian band in 1985. The EP was hastily recorded over the course of a couple of days and orginally released as a split record with another band Século XX (Overdose) on a Brazillian label “Cogumelo Records”. It’s immediately obvious the band was still finding its feet. That’s not to say that it’s not any good. It’s actually a lot more listenable than some of the underground stuff coming out at the time. Despite the rough sound to this there definitely some charm in what’s going on. This release reminds me a lot of the first SODOM EP, in the way that the songs are simple, and have certain punk attitude. Another point I want to make with this one, is I’m surprised this isn’t mentioned more in the “First Death Metal” band debate as they (and Sodom) managed to get some pretty “Death-like” albums out in 1985.
The album opens up with the obligatory creepy intro. The band didn’t seem to have a great grasp on the English language at the time as the lyrics just seem to be “Satanic phrases” they probably lifted from Venom or Possessed records and lyrically cut and pasted together. It’s cool though, the band was extremely young at the time and for a first recording and given the circumstances this was recorded under, this is really well done.(Looking further into this record I’ve just found out the band didn’t even know how to read or write English at the time and friend translated the songs from Portuguese into English for them to be able to release an English language record rather than in their native tongue).
Musically the band were basically poverty stricken as well. The instruments used on this record were for the most part borrowed from friends. The painting for the cover was done by one of their ex-guitarplayer. I guess it’s a testament to the bands’ will to be that this even came out. It’s amazing what you can achieve even under what would have been some of the worst conditions to start a band.
Overall I like this release, as the songs have some pretty basic but really cool riffage and there’s something about them that’s instantly likeable. There’s four real songs (if you exclude the intro) and they’re all great. The Necromancer and Troops of Doom for me are the stand outs but its an all round great EP. I wasn’t the only one that thought this, as this split record went on to sell 8,000 copies in its original form. The EP was then released again as a standalone Sepultura release without Século XX in 1990.
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