POSSESSED — Seven Churches (review)

POSSESSED — Seven Churches album cover Album · 1985 · Death Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
4/5 ·
voila_la_scorie
I was in my front yard, pulling up weeds and plugged into my Walkman when my girlfriend came up and leapt upon my back, snatched the headphones off my heads and clapped them over her own. She began banging her head in mocked exaggeration, saying, “Oh, yeah, heavy metal!” Little did either of us know that the music on the cassette would later be regarded by many as the first death metal album.

Back in 1985, Possessed were just another thrash metal band on the Banzai label in Canada. The speed was there as it was to be expected. In fact, Possessed seemed more hell bent for speed than most other bands. At least Metallica and Slayer and the likes could slow down for some monsters riffs. Possessed only did that twice on the album. Jeff Becerra’s vocals were darker and more evil, suitable for a band named Possessed, but after hearing Tom Warrior’s barbarian bellow, Quorthon’s sinister Popeye croak, and Tom Araya’s demonic howling, this was just another crayon colour in the box.

Possessed were about being fast, Satanic, and frightening. Few songs expressed much technically and there was no subtlety outside of the opening guitar reproduction of Mike Oldfield’s “Tubular Bells” piano theme. To many, this is just a thrash album that pointed in the direction of death metal to come. To others, the unpredictable guitar solos are too wild and unformatted to be true thrash. The fact that there’s a song called “Death Metal” might also be reason to call this album the first of the subgenre. In a YouTube video tracing the musical roots of death metal back from 1990, the 10-minute journey winds up with “Fallen Angel” from this album. But as the liner notes to the re-issue suggest, “death metal” or “black metal” (the distinction had not yet been made clear) could be heard in the music of Hellhammer, Bathory, Kreator, Destruction, Death, Sodom, and Slayer. It was the primordial soup of extreme metal that would produce not one but two sub-genres with “Seven Churches” emerging as a death metal sign post.

Though the production often gets criticized, this is one of those albums that lets you forget about the sound quality as you listen. The guitars attempt speeds so fast that drummer Mike Sus cannot manage more than a standard thrash metal, fast snare beat. Some kick drumming is going on there at times but not like what we’d hear soon. The song writing is pretty typical of the time: shout “666!” a few times and roar evilly about Satan and Hell. Well, it's possible there were deeper lyrics as someone in the band was big on reading if I recall an old interview correctly. Nevertheless, as a historically significant album and a look back on thrash metal and extreme metal in the mid-eighties, this is a little gem to have.
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