Before "Schizophrenia", "Beneath the Remains", or "Arise", Sepultura was an angry and determined Brazilian Death/Thrash band looking to get noticed, which they did with "Morbid Visions". This is Sepultura playing heavily Venom-influenced black metal that features all the imagery you'd expect from an old Slayer album, and it must be heard to be believed. It's been 27 years since the sultry summer of '86, when four teenage outcast death metalheads from Brazil booked seven days of time at a backwards studio in Belo Horizonte, and emerged with their debut LP "Morbid Visions." That band was Sepultura, and the record remains a milestone of brutality as well as one of the benchmark releases in early death metal. It in fact may be one of the first true death metal LPs to ever be released; sure you had Possessed from the year before (whom these young longhairs seemed to idolize), but along with Repulsion, Death, and Bathory, Sepultura were one of the few to take the sound to new, unforeseen speed and extremes for '86. Listen to any of the album's eight tracks and you hear elements that would turn up in countless recordings since: namely, downtuned guitars, (near) blastbeats, and particularly, Max Cavalera's evil growling vocal emissions. All in all, classic stuff here. "Morbid Visions" deserves its place in history, along with other recordings from the same era like "the Seven Churches," "Horrified" and "Scream Bloody Gore," as pioneering works that shaped the face of death metal for years to come. Highly recommended. Special edition adding "Bestial devastation" MLP as bonus as well as unreleased Demo/Live tracks.