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Rating: Take two old BC Rich guitars with irreparably compromised electronics and connect them respectively to your home's intercom and your mother's toaster. And detune them. Then take a nice set of pots, the kind they sell you with the threat of abandonment in the heart of Barbagia, on one of those all-inclusive day trips, 15 euros - by bus for the elderly. Position yourself behind these instruments. Then grab your seven-year-old cousin and put a bass in her hands (the result might have been even better). Call your cousin's classmate - yes, the one born with forceps, on that day when, due to a miscommunication, a plumber was operating - stuff her with acid, show her "Amityville Possession", give her paper and crayons and have her make a nice drawing for the cover. Finally, steal your grandmother's "Carmina Burana" record, just to create the intro and outro. You're almost there. What's missing still? Oh yes, you need to record the album. So, write a handful of lyrics like "Satan is my consultant", steal your sister's karaoke machine, retreat to the living room, each with a glass of caipirinha, and unleash your rage. The result? It depends. If your name is Mario Rossi or Giuseppe Brambilla, it might not be the best. But if your names are Max Cavalera, Igor Cavalera, Jairo Guedz, and - alas! - Paulo Jr., the result will be nothing less than ONE OF THE MOST DEVASTATING DEATH METAL ALBUMS OF ALL TIME!
Guitars like chainsaws (but the bass more like a half-assed attempt), with that buzzing distortion drilling into your brain like a dentist's drill, a drum kit that offers no respite, still primitive and regressed but relentlessly determined to destroy, and a muddy voice mixing adenoids and throat polyps. It's precisely the strongly naive quality of the entire album - Sepultura's debut if you exclude the "Bestial Devastation" EP from the previous year - that makes this work sinister, unsettling, and beautiful. The basic technique, the terrible recording, the naivety of both the lyrics and the songwriting, the bassist who is more of a divine punishment than a bassist, do not detract a single gram from the splendor of this album, and indeed they highlight even more the rage (and the thrill of being able to channel it into notes) of a band that would only need another couple of years to give us "Schizophrenia" and "Beneath the Remains".
Each track is a pearl of malice. Overall, the album is very - even too - homogeneous, the structures repeat, and the sounds don't change, but therein lies its beauty. Because listening to "Morbid Visions" is like entering a dark and smoky swamp, where no matter how you turn your gaze, you see nothing but black, bubbling muck, and sinister shadows skimming you from every side. In short, even though the songs all somewhat resemble each other, and in some cases are hard to distinguish (see the beginning of "Troops of Doom" and "Funeral Rites"), the album strikes straight to the heart, and you can't help but love it. And a song like "War" is worth the listen alone, a monolithic fresco of malice, with an insistent instrumental refrain and a piercing guitar solo like an agonizing scream.
If an alien delegation arriving on Earth threatened to destroy us unless we introduced them to true Death Metal, as well as Reign in Blood by Slayer, Scream Bloody Gore by Death, and Seven Churches by Possessed, I would give them this. Hoping they forgive us for Paulo Jr.!
Tracklist and Lyrics
02 Mayhem (03:17)
Endless war, endless screams
In the boundaries of Hell we live
Total death, total hate
On the devastated plains we fight
Evil minds, insane minds
Mutilated corpses over the ground
Soldiers of Hell, soldiers of death
Seeking victims to exterminate
Black death, black night
Where the spirits leave their crypts
Torture souls, drifting souls
By the world of hate
Multiradiation, multideath
Destroys and kills
Even in the deep of Hell
Fallen corpse, fallen angel
Total injury is the only rule
MAYHEM
Death slaughter, death rules
Under the sign of fear we live
Bestial lust, bestial rites
Darkness send it's bestial warriors
Shrill crys, tormenting crys
Break the silence of the dark night
Living with hate, living with death
Giving the world total destruction
Blood world, rotting world
Corrosion of insane human mind
Black pest, devastating pest
Under the evoking circle we pray
Baptized skulls, evil skulls
People screaming chained underground
There is no return, there is no escape
In the evil refuge you are slaves
MAYHEM
03 Troops of Doom (03:23)
Total Eclipse Hides The Earth
The Night Of Doom Has Come
Antichrist Soldiers Are Proclaimed
To Send Souls To The Hell
Catastrophe And Destruction
Mankind Is Slaughtered Without Mercy
Suphul Clouds Are In The Air
Legions Winds Corrose The Universe
The Messiah, Redeemers Of Mankind
Chained In The Valley Of Hades
Crowds Blinded By Evil
Only Death Is Real
Total Destruction
Walls Of Churches
Stained By Blood
Altars Burning In The Flames
The Doom Cries Out For Insanity
The Nuclear War Announces The End Of The World
The Mankind Is Buried And Forgotten
Prophets Foresee The Doom
They Foresee The Triumph Of Your Death
04 War (05:34)
Until The Philosophy Which Holds One Race
Superior And Another Inferior
Everywhere Is War
War In The East, War In The West
War Up North, War Down South
War
Until The Color Of A Man's Skin
Is No More Significant
Than The Colour Of His Eyes
I Got To Say There'll Be (no?) War
War in the east, war in the west
War up north, war down south
War
That Until The Basic Human Rights Are Equally
Guaranteed To All, Without Regard To Race
There'll Be A War
War In The East, War In The West
War Up North, War Down South
War
War
War
War
War, War, War, War
War In The East (It's A War)
War In The West (Now Everywhere Is War)
War Up North (It's A War)
War Down South (Now Everywhere Is War)
War In The East, War In The West
War Up North, War Down South
War, War (We Find It Necessary)
War, War
War, War (We Find It Necessary)
War, War
War (And We Know We Shall Win)
(And We Are Confident)
War In Africa or America,
North America Or Brazil
Or Australia, It Doesn't Matter.
(We're The Same)
05 Crucifixion (05:03)
We deny Gods and his rule
We defy his supreme force
Crucified by the dark power
His death was a glory
Forgotten by our mind forever
He's left the churches to torment us
We'll destroy the high altar
Until we see the ashes of pain
CRUCIFIXION
We'll show to the world our hate
The priests will have their final torment
We'll spit on the churches, we have an ideal
Black tortures you'll feel
The mankind goes to suicide
Thay have faith in Gods as false as their name
Christ, preacher of goodness and beauty
Gods, preachers of lies and destruction
The Gods grave doors
Is below his brains
Rotenness and dirtyness go out
By a simple prayer of mercy
The reason of his death will be your blame
Your master is buried in the abyss
The dead, they already celebrate his arrival
In the altar of fallen Gods, throne of his own existence
06 Show Me the Wrath (03:54)
Evil warrior
Fight till death
Sons of war
Kill with wrath
Born in a village
He's learn to fight
Grew up with strength
His pleasure is to kill
Sons of evil
He is insane
Maniac butcher
He is feared
He doesn't have religion
Killing is what he wants to false and fools
He there is to torture
Gods of the storm
Infernal death
The blood of victims
Gushes on my hands
Show me the wrath
On the frozen lands
He is born
Living among the barbarian
Violence is his business
He's forget his sword
On the fire of Pandemonium
Blessed by Hell
Feared by christians
His destiny
Is to keep killing
Wild life
Malign creature
The holy temple
He will destroy
He'll dethrone Gods
He'll be emperor of death
07 Funeral Rites (04:24)
The doom is near in this night
Bloody skulls are over the pentagram
Cry for the sabbath bells
Fallen angels scream for mercy
It's a time to bury the priest
On the down of Meggido your grave is dig
The sky turns as black as spell
Haunting my eyes and my mind funeral rites
You are chosen by Hell
Dig your sepulchre
We force you to come in
And we'll bury you alive
Black songs are heard with the funeral
Rotting corpses mutilated over the ground
Graves will violated
And corpses will be stolen
FUNERAL RITES
08 Empire of the Damned (04:26)
There is an empire in the boundaries of Hell
Where only the death can reach and only demons reign
Place of lust, blasphemy and eternal darkness
Illusions of the darkness
Power of death
strength of Hell
Empire of the damned
On the black hills of Meggido you'll find
A place so cold as the mist, so dark as the night
Black armies march to the hills
To make power of the reign of darkness crow
The exterminating angels
Here there's to be emperor
To command Nospheratus
Creature of crypts
From the eternal darkness
A blade will shine
Saints and Gods will judged
Killed and buried
One day this empire will be discovered
For the judgement of mankind
Gnash of teeth and endless cries will be heard
The Hell there's to bury, the Heaven there's to dethrone
In the quitness of Heaven
And in the orgy of hades
An empire will raise
Against the churches
And against the priests
It'll be like a concentration camp
A desolate place
Where the sun will be black as the darkness
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