When we look back through the history of our great binder heavy metal, there are names that stand out. Ask a novice on the defining forces of the genre, the Mount Rushmore, and you're bound to get some constants: Black Sabbath, Metallica, Slayer, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest. Those are the standouts, the names that have shaped with blood, sweat and guitar riffs, what we inject in our veins today. Hell, without those listed, there would be no Metal Injection.
Possessed is a name that deserves it's place amongst the all-time greats, the definitive names that shaped heavy metal. But for one reason or another, through tragedy and piss poor luck, the band is not held in the same public mainstream reverence as the rest.
Jeff Becerra gets it. Death metal isn't an easy sell. Fuck, when the band released Seven Churches in the fall of 1985, it didn't exactly light the world on fire. But nostalgia is a remarkable thing, and metal fans wear their hearts, and fandom, on their sleeves.
Dripping with evil and spiking levels of 'heavy' that blew the minds of even the most jaded and in-the-know fan, Possessed's Seven Churches and '86 followup Beyond the Gates are today regarded as the bedrock of death metal.
"With metal people will wait 33 years, which is incredible," says Becerra, who caught up with Metal Injection for an, as always, candid interview. "The fans are a lot more loyal and supportive and they stick by you through thick and thin, which is a blessing."
Signed to Nuclear Blast, Possessed recently released their first album of new material in 33 years, the epic and brutal Revelations of Oblivion.
The album is, in many ways, classic Possessed, losing none of the technical prowess, and even less of the demonic undertones the band made famous at a time where hailing Satan wasn't exactly PG.
"Back then Satan was actually scary. Even writing the lyrics you would kind of scare yourself," Becerra recalls. "Nowadays it’s not like that at all. Lucifer is mainstream. Sometimes I think what part I played, no matter how small. You mention Christ and people look at you like you’re a fucking freak. You throw up the horns and say ‘hail Satan’ and everyone is right on-board. To me black is black and white is white. Good is good and evil.. it’s all pretty cut and clear. It used to be thrilling to pass over that line and now that line has become completely blurred. Things are a lot different now."
Much has changed since the band broke ground and redefined the heavy in heavy metal. The death metal genre has mutated into a hydra, with sub-brands and sub-genres ranging from technical death metal, folk death metal, and just about every deep cut you could think of.
Becerra and bandmates Daniel Gonzalez, Emilio Marquez, Robert Cardenas and Claudeous Creamer weren't looking to reinvent the wheel with Revelations of Oblivion, preferring a less is more approach that spotlighted the strengths of Possessed.
"There were two routes I considered. I considered going super heavy and being the heaviest band in the world, but I had already done that," Becerra says. "Instead of going what I consider to be a race to the bottom, which is just white noise talking about fucking nuns and cunts with fucking crucifixes and blast beats, I thought I’d show off the technical and musical abilities of my guys, because they’re great. I never really had that. Try to enjoy and make it a hard and heavy album where you can actually understand the lyrics and hear the guitars. Nothing was hidden, you kind of showcase it. Explore some melodies and a little more vocal range.
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"To keep that edge in Possessed is really easy, because you can’t sell out, you can’t give up. You just have to keep going forward," Becerra explains. "I want to take chances and put out something new and fresh. It rules being underground, but you want to reach as many people as possible. There’s something broken in people like me where you kind of need the adoration and acceptance of everybody. It bothers me when people criticized Possessed, because, hey, all I’m doing is trying to create some art, right? What can be wrong with that? I’m not trying to hurt anybody."
Peeling back the layers of the album, and a modern day hell-on-earth is at the core, a thinly veiled horror that rests just above the comfort of our day-to-day.
"To me Revelations is a very metal book in the Bible. There’s dragons sweeping a third of the stars out of the sky, Jesus comes back as a lion, instead of a lamb on a horse with a sword just lobbing off heads and the streets turn into rivers of blood and, you know, the whore of Babylon, unlocking the 1,000 year pits of hell. Truly if you go by that Satan has never been to hell, he has always been on earth, right? I was thinking on the terms, waxing philosophical, really what Revelations is about, from Seven Churches on through this new album, is that there’s an inter woven thread through the albums," Becerra explains.
"On this one it was what if Satan became so utterly mainstream that God was utterly gone? Completely absent. No more God, religion, Christianity. Only Satan, and what would that world look like? Then I started noticing that much of that stuff is going on today. To me hell is insanity. I kind of think of different ways that man’s existence can become devoid of something and become hellish. The demons within you."
The trials, tribulations and tragedy of Possessed and Becerra have been well documented. The fact that he and his group of death metal warriors are performing and producing at a high level is nothing short of miraculous. And in case you were wondering, Becerra has far from lost his fire. Timing, for good or bad, has been and continues to be everything for he and Possessed.
"I never lost that fire, I’ve just been waiting for my turn to strike," he says. "I was crushed you know and it took me awhile to rebound from that and get back to myself. You have to have something to rebel against before you can rebel. Luckily I have a great family and support system and people who have my back.
"It was weird, because I thought I had 100 brothers and sisters before I got shot," Becerra says, recalling the near fatal shooting that left him paralyzed in 1989. "As soon as I got shot it was like a veil lifted. You see people for what they really are. I lost all my friends. As much as I was pushing them away, they kind of gladly ran away and I was kind of left on my own for a long, long time. It took a lot of soul searching to get back."
Getting back, in and of itself, was a process, but one not lacking in motivation. To return to the stage, performing everywhere from club venues to an emotional return at Wacken Open Air, was one thing, but writing, recording and releasing new material was the true fuel that kept the iconic frontman going.
"The one pinpoint that got me through the darkest times was creating a new album," he says. "I’ve been waiting until the time was right where I was able. Of course I could have came back and just done some rehashed bullshit, but I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to shit on my own legacy or what Possessed means to people. I want to have the right combinations of musicians and the right guys to do Possessed justice, because Possessed has a long history of finding genius type people that are super innovative. Those are really hard to find, especially in death metal.
"It feels like there’s this invisible hand helping me out, but at the same time I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop. We were neck and neck with Slayer back in the 80s and then I got shot. I’m always waiting for something bad to happen. It’s crazy," Becerra admits. "Literally when you join Possessed you have to be in it to see it, but it feels like a curse and a blessing at the same time. It’s like you sell your soul to the devil. You get some fame but the devil always gets a better deal out of it."
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