Rotting

The ambiguity that existed between death, black and thrash metal in the 80s pretty much goes without saying for anyone casually familiar with the Teutonic Trio, let alone all of the other formative bands that were pushing the boundaries. However, very few of them presented a sound so closely interconnecting the three that one couldn't separate out a dominant influence by which they could be summarily labled, and chief among these was Sacrofago, Brazil's lesser known contribution to extreme metal. Riding forth like a raging beast with an arsenal of influences comparable to contemporaries such as Bathory, Sodom, Possessed, Slayer, and their death/thrashing compatriots Sepultura, they offered up some of the most truly twisted and groundbreaking material of the 80s thrash era, while providing a framework along with the rest in pioneering what are now booming death and black metal scenes.

Of their respective releases, "Rotting" stands as something of a transitional aberration, consisting of long, epic, yet primative songs that embody the respective characteristics of both its predecessor "I.N.R.I." and its eventual follow-up "The Laws Of Scourge", being slightly longer than both yet strangely designated as a EP in contrast to the other two. It takes on a heavily varied approach not all that different from the complex epics heard on "Hell Awaits", but it's presented in a manner that has a bit more in common with "Show No Mercy" in terms of overall sound character. It's replete with hyper-speed thrash beats and has a frequency of blasting that is only really rivaled by Morbid Angel's "Altars Of Madness", all the while listening like a meeting point between "Under The Sign Of The Black Mark" and "Seven Churches" and exaggerated beyond what either of them ended up becoming.

To say that an album like this was a bit ahead of its time would definitely be a massive understatement, but it's also an album that comes with a few minor flaws. For all the wild variation in tempo going on and the radically differing characteristics of each section within a given song (take for instance "Tracey", which is loaded with Bay Area stop/start sections, frenzied blast beats, mid-tempo thrashing grooves and includes a near doom-like slow section), this album has a fair amount of repetition to it that is actually quite characteristic of the earliest black/thrash offerings of 1984-86, just compounded so as to construct longer songs by smashing 2 or 3 in an older style. It makes for an album that has a massive impact factor going for it, but also is a bit disorganized at times. Having said that, the level of musicianship going on here is at least as advanced as anything that thrash metal was dabbling with collectively at this point outside of maybe a few progressively tinged acts, coming with a healthy dose of complex riffing and wild shred fests.

If "Rotting" could be summed up in a single statement, it would be a 1987 sounding death/black/thrash album formatted as if it were trying to be a technical early 90s effort. In this respect, it does have a level of appropriateness for its time in metal history, though it still stands as a trail-blazing effort upon which a number of subsequent band would draw influence from, though with maybe the exception of the recent Fenris-endorsed Norwegian thrash act Deathhammer, nobody comes to mind as trying to all but exclusively appropriate the same approach. It's about as insane of a thrash-oriented album as can be found in the late 80s, and even upstages Sepultura's early offerings in terms of overall intensity, though it falls a little bit behind in terms of cohesiveness. If early Messiah, Possessed and Bathory are on the radar, Sarcofago definitely can be found at their border.