☝The founder of Cogumelo (yes, the really old guy) and Alex / Thornspawn...
“Dealing with metal back in the 80’s was sacrilegious stuff.”
In the recent history of western music, every preeminent scene or movement was born from the partnership of talented musicians (or the peculiar, at least) and people willing to support the recording and distribution of these groups. From Country to Punk Rock, it has always been like that.
For the metal scene in Minas Gerais during the 80’s, Cogumelo was responsible for making it phonographically possible. Established in 1980 as a rock record store, it also became a recording label when its owners João Eduardo de Faria Filho and Creusa Pereira de Faria (aka Patty), decided to expand the business in 1985. They noticed how the number of bands and people interested in metal was rising in Belo Horizonte and decided to release a record that showcased that. They released the split between Overdose and Sepultura through Cogumelo Produções, which would later become Cogumelo Records.
It all worked out, and from then on, Cogumelo was responsible for launching pretty much every metal band from Belo Horizonte and built itself a respectable legacy. Nowadays, it boasts over 150 releases in its catalog. From the seminal Minas Gerais bands, to Ratos de Porão and Pato Fu, up until the new metal generation of Belo Horizonte.
It was said that, in Belo Horizonte during the 80’s, if you flew over the Augusto Lima avenue, between the Rio de Janeiro and Espírito Santo streets, you could see a huge black spot. That was a bunch of metalheads getting together around the Cogumelo store.
In 2005, I spoke to the owner João Eduardo, who told me a little about the first years of the label...
Cogumelo as a record store exists since 1980. How were things back then?
When the store was founded in 1980, it was in Avenida Augusto de Lima 339, on the corner with Rio de Janeiro street. It was a common rock record store. It moved out of that place in 1998. The store itself is 25 years old, and the label is 20. We had good visibility here in Minas Gerais, unlike São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. In Rio de Janeiro there isn’t even any Heavy Metal, back in the 80’s there was Dorsal Atlântica, Taurus, Azul Limão, it was actually a good scene. The problem with Rio is that the mentality is a little bit different. Over here people are into the actual metal scene, it was always like that. It may have gone through several phases, but the metal thing here has always been strong. So much that the record label has been active this whole time, constantly releasing Heavy Metal and Hardcore material. There was a time when we turned a little towards Pop, in the 90’s, when we released Pato Fu, Defalla, Tianastácia, afterwards we jumped out of that ship because nowadays you need a lot of money to release that kind of sound: you gotta pay a lot of fucking cash, a lot of promotion. Nowadays we don’t have the structure to support that.
I imagine that was a symptom of the times.
Yeah, that whole Grunge bullshit came in. The only ones that you could salvage from that was Nirvana, Soundgarden and Mudhoney. Everything else was shit, you know? That was the issue, it weakened the metal scene, including in the US. While that grunge thing went on, Heavy Metal had its legs broken. Only by the end of the 90’s things started working out again. Around 6 or 7 years ago metal started coming back strong – both in Europe and in the US. And I think that when people talk about the return of the 80’s, I think they’re wrong. It’s the return of Heavy Metal’s base itself. Because the bands that are coming back stronger are bands from the 70’s: Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Mötorhead…so, if bands are coming back, they are coming back to a rediscovery niche market. Both oldschool folks and today’s kids are listening to these bands.
Let’s try to determine a chronology. The store is founded in 1980, how was the metal scene back then?
The metal thing really started to stick in Brazil around ’84. In 1985 it gained a lot of strength because of Rock in Rio, which was when it all got a huge boost. We were starting to realize that as a store (who opened the store was actually my wife, Patty, at the time I didn’t even think of working in the business). And the Heavy Metal thing, which was amplified by Rock in Rio, really got our attention. We were always into rock, we had a rock record store and saw that metal was a very strong niche market. So we worked towards making a connection with São Paulo, where that scene was also growing strong, there was the Woodstock store, Galeria do Rock, Devil Discos, Rock Brigade was starting out as well…
When we looked into this Heavy Metal thing, we noticed there was a scene here in Belo Horizonte. There were some good bands, playing shows already. But it was just a bunch of kids, really. We took those kids and gave them some support and structure. We had a junction of very important factors in Belo Horizonte: the talent of these kids, the support of the Cogumelo label and the first studio at the time with the technology and conditions to make quality work for these bands, "JG". It’s considered to be at the same level of, for example, Kreator, Sodom, Destruction, bands that recorded in foreign countries. Bands here were at the same level of foreign bands in terms of sound. And the guys here were in touch with the guys over there.
Sepultura, Sarcófago and others contacted other bands by mail, traded fanzines and demo tapes. They were in touch with Death, Kreator, Sodom, there was a huge exchange of information. It’s even hard to talk about a pioneer band, because there was that information exchange and bands mirrored each other. If you take the sonority of bands like Destruction, Sodom, Kreator and Death, and compare it to the local bands, you can find several similarities, both in themes and song structure. It’s death, thrash, black metal, so bands benefitted from that support and Cogumelo could not have come so far without those bands and a quality studio. It was the right time, with the right bands, and us giving them support. Without those factors, there wouldn’t the anything.
When did it start looking like a proper scene?
That would be around the same time as the first Metal BH (First Heavy Metal festival in Belo Horizonte, which took place in March 1985). Sometime before that we had already noticed there was a scene beginning to form. The thing is, we had Vladimir (Vladimir Korg, Chakal’s vocalist) working in the store with us. Vladimir – and Patty – had a strong connection with those kids, mainly because they were at the store all the time. So, due to that contact, we had the idea to record a split with two bands that had material ready to be recorded. Those bands were Overdose and Sepultura. At the time of the split, Sepultura was raw, and Overdose were way more technical, more polished and all that. Vladimir always lobbied for Sepultura, he was close to them. He followed their recording sessions, helped them with translations, writing lyrics, he had a special affection for Sepultura and that made us focus more on Sepultura as well.
But there were also other active bands, that would be part of Warfare Noise later on: Chakal, Holocausto, Mutilator and the one that really blew up internationally, Sarcófago. Nowadays I consider them the most successful band in our label. They became a cult band, a worldwide reference in Metal even today. They influenced the style, the attitude, lyrics, aesthetics, there are foreign bands all over Europe, mainly in Norway, who shamelessly copy Sarcófago. So, 1985 would be the year when things really came into place.
In March 1986, we organised a huge release show for Sepultura and Overdose’s album at Ginástico. It was also then that we started organising events. This show, our first, was huge, with almost 2000 people in the audience. The line-up was Sepultura, Overdose, Mutilator and Dorsal Atlântica. It was the show where there was the burning of a cross. You see, ’85 and ’86 were defining years, when the whole Metal thing really blew up. It was also when people from outside of Belo Horizonte began paying attention. In 1987, the whole scene was consolidated: practically every band in the label already had their own LP, Sepultura’s third was just coming out, Schizophrenia, Andreas [Kisser] had already moved to Belo Horizonte – Jairo went to play in a cheesy band, kinda poser sounding like Motley Crue, and the band at the time was leaning further and further towards Thrash Metal, starting with Death Metal and being influenced by the Bay Area bands, you know the deal.
The scene was very dynamic back then. When we released Warfare Noise, the other bands were already taking it seriously, playing shows frequently, even traveling to neighboring states to play. Going back to the start…what did we do? We put Sepultura and Overdose on our shoulders, and since we kept in touch with bands and producers from other states, we booked shows for them everywhere in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. That made the Minas Gerais metal expand even further, until then no one knew about it. Shop owners in Rio and São Paulo would see me walk in with the records under my arm and laugh: “Fuck man, that’s ridiculous. A band called Sepultura and another called Overdose? That’s going nowhere”.
And there was nothing like the bands from Belo Horizonte. Of course, there was Vulcano, from Santos, and Dorsal Atlântica from Rio, but they didn’t have the same repercussion. Even here in Belo Horizonte, there was Mutilator for example. In my opinion, Mutilator was a band that could have been as big as Sepultura, because they were really freaking good. They had a really good sound, nice production, aesthetics, but even Sarcófago themselves, whom we thought would be even bigger: we licensed them through Music for Nations and they toured through Europe.
Sepultura was really lucky because they ended up in a label that was growing, Roadrunner. They had Mercyful Fate and some other band from that time, but the thing is, they were establishing their franchise in the US, Roadracer. One of the first bands they signed was Sepultura. They backed Sepultura and it was Sepultura that carried them basically. If you notice, practically every other band in Roadrunner were similar to Sepultura. But we can’t take anything away from Roadrunner, because they were dynamic, constantly keeping up with the trends. So Sepultura was lucky to take advantage of that opportunity, to have the backing of a strong label that believed in them.
With Warfare Noise, Brazil and – in a way – the rest of world, paid more attention to Belo Horizonte. The bands were really good at the musical level. Of course, things weren’t so great when it came to organization. Most bands here didn’t have that entrepreneur vision they should have had. Sepultura was one of the first bands to have that ambition. The bands that were part of the first Warfare Noise were bands that came to our store all the time. We knew them from the festivals, we knew their demo tapes, we sold their tapes in our store, so we had an idea of which bands sold more demos. Our guideline for Warfare Noise was: “which bands are the important ones, that deserve to be in such a compilation?”. And the release was kind of surprising. The release of Sepultura’s Morbid Visions, and Warfare Noise, caught a lot of attention. At the time, besides Germany and the US, there weren’t as many metal bands with that potential anywhere else in the world. Overdose didn’t jump in back then. They were a band with a different kind of structure, and unlike Sepultura, who agreed to record Morbid Visions with us right away, Overdose went looking for other labels to release their material. The following year, in 1987, we started to work on each band’s record because of the demand for Warfare Noise. Everyone was asking about their albums, and those bands had the potential to record LPs. So, in sequence, we released Holocausto, Mutilator, Sarcófago and Chakal. Sepultura’s record came out at the end of the year, which was Schizophrenia, in 1987.
Back then, Schizophrenia, was the record in which Cogumelo invested the most. Both in recording and graphic production. It was the label’s first double cover album. The band was already in rotation throughout Brazil, they had already opened for Venom here in Belo Horizonte, there was a lot of exposure. That was when the gringos really started turning their eyes towards Sepultura.
Anyways, you could say that the apex of the Belo Horizonte metal scene was between 1986 and ’89. It was insane the number of bands that were around in 1989. That was when we released the second Warfare Noise, with Witchhammer, Aamonhammer, Megathrash and Mayhem (though Warfare Noise 2 didn’t have such a big impact).
It wasn’t easy. Dealing with metal in the ‘80s was sacrilegious stuff. Up until the promulgation of the constitution (after Brazil’s military dictatorship ended, in 1988), we had to go to the Federal Police, so they would approve the album’s lyrics. At times they would take the records and make us change the lyrics. Every record until 1988 had to go through the censorship’s eye. Back then Sexthrash would never be approved! No chance! And we had to translate the lyrics for them, we had to bring a copy in Portuguese and another in English. The police didn’t even have people who spoke English. So, we translated it to sound milder, in hopes they would approve it. And it did, because they didn’t understand any of it anyways.
About the copyright issues, does Cogumelo still have the copyrights on Sepultura’s records, for example?
We do, on their first records, Bestial Devastation, Morbid Visions and Schizophrenia. We actually show the record sales to the musicians. But there were some reissues released by Roadrunner, whose licenses were conceded to them. When Roadrunner signed with Sepultura they thought of everything. When they noticed that it was getting big, they got in touch with me, we sealed the contract and licensed the records. We always try to be transparent when it comes to this stuff. If any artist has a problem, thinks they didn’t receive what was due, all they have to do is get in touch with us.
It has happened many times already, guys coming up to me and go: “João, I want to get paid for this and that”. And I’ll say: “no, you can’t get any money. I signed a contract with four people, the whole band. So, I have to pay four people and their heirs.”. Imagine that someone wants to be paid someone else’s royalties: “oh, but that guy died, that other one started doing crack and died as well, you can pay me the royalties.”. And I do, and it doesn’t go well. Then people show up and ask: “fuck, you paid that other guy?”. That’s why we are so careful when it comes to managing intellectual rights. Here at Cogumelo we are transparent, if someone is not happy, just come to us and we’ll set the record straight.
