Antes do Fim

It wasn’t until a few years back that I started looking for more (forgotten) underground thrash from South America. I grew up with the more well known names from Germany, the U.K. and U.S. and for years I only knew Brazilian acts like Ratos De Porao, Sarcofago and Sepultura (and more recently, Violator). When I got my hands on old albums from Holocausto, Atomica, Vulcano and Dorsal Atlantica a whole new eighties South American scene opened up to me.

And Dorsal Atlantica were one of the more enjoyable acts. Even though in my opinion the band got compositionally worse with each album the productions got better. The 1986 version of “Antes do Fim” still stands firm if you’re in for another slab of ancient death-thrash a la Morbid Visions. After that album Dorsal Atlântica tried several things to cope with the changing interest of the average metal audience by playing death metal and even some groovy stuff during the nineties. So over the years we can’t speak of a consistent nor die-hard thrashing band.

A lot of the Brazilian thrash metal albums during the second half of the eighties sound as if they were all recorded in the same studio and all share the same flaws. Thin sloppy guitars, dinky toy drums and aggressie vocals with too much reverb. As said, I used to call it the ‘Morbid-Visions-sound’. Now I just call it the Brasil 85-87 Sound (BEES).

BEES does have it’s charm. It gives all those records that same atmosphere. But obviously it doesn’t fit all the bands and it sounds better with Sepultura than Dorsal Atlântica. Just imagine if this album would have had the production of Kreaqtor’s ‘Terrible Certainty’ or even Dark Angels’ Leave Scars. Compositionally and technically Dorsal Atlântica were slightly better than most other Brazilian thrash metal acts in 1986 so this neanderthal sound doesn’t always do justice to the songs.

Now I could go on about how underground and honest this records was and how it is much better than all those bands that made it big and therefor are always accused of being more ‘commercial’ but honestly there is a reason (other than coming from Brasil) why other thrash metal bands from ’86 became more succesful. Simply because those other bands wrote (slightly) better and catchier songs. So if you’re really into thrash (and not only the A-level bands), “Antes do Fim” is a nice B-record with much to enjoy on it. It sure as hell beats the crap out of contemporary releases from Holocausto, Metalmorphose and Vulcano!

If I were to make a comparisson it would be that “Antes do Fim” is balancing between Sepultura’s ‘Morbid Visions’ and the Necrodeath album ‘Into the Macabre’. And please, even if the production here isn’t ‘all that’, do get the original 1986 recordings and not the badly performed re-recorded 2005 version (“Antes do Fim, Depois do Fim”)