Sepultura's "Beneath The Remains" Turns 25

New York, NY (Top40 Charts/ Roadrunner Records) Sepultura's breakthrough album, 1989's Beneath the Remains, was released April 7, 1989—25 years ago this week. (The video for "Inner Self" is above.) Max Cavalera told Metal Hammer (in an interview that's mysteriously unavailable at the moment) about some of the inspiration behind the album. "Believe it or not," he said, "a lot of the lyrics on Beneath the Remains were inspired by U2's War album...Before then, I'd been inspired by Black Sabbath and Motörhead, but I started listening to U2, who had really great lyrics. If you listen to the title track of Sepultura's Arise album, which came after Beneath the Remains, one of the main lines is 'Under a pale grey sky' which is taken directly from 'Under a blood red sky' on U2's 'New Year's Day.'"



Monte Conner, Roadrunner's longtime A&R wizard, recalls negotiating with former label head Cees Wessels over money: "The budget for Beneath the Remains was only $8,000 but we soon realized that was way too little to make a competitive-sounding record using an American producer...I got Cees Wessels to approve a $13,000 budget, which was a very large sum for us at the time. It was supposed to be an eight-song record, but the band came to me at the last minute and told me that they had a strong ninth song. I asked Cees if we could increase the budget by another thousand dollars to allow for it. Luckily he agreed, as that final song, 'Primitive Future', became the ideal album closer."

Stream Beneath the Remains on Spotify: