Death metal pioneers Possessed are back, three decades after their tragic end which halted the career of this heavily influential band. The band’s new album “Revelations Of Oblivion” is a reminder of why so many extreme metal acts that followed in the wake of their presence back in the 80’s were influenced by them in one way or another. After listening to the new songs and being blown away by the sheer quality of it all, it was time to chat to the main man himself behind Possessed, Jeff Becerra, to find out how it all came together and to also discuss the early days of death metal.
Andrew: I was checking out the new album and had a preview of it and was absolutely blown away man, it was so good! You must be really happy with how these songs have turned out.
Jeff: Yeah of course nothing is by mistake, we worked our asses off on this and of course Daniel Gonzalez, my guitarist, he went to college as a producer and engineer so it’s always nice to have him in my clan because I can say what I want and he can make sure it happens.
Andrew: Yeah so let’s get into the nitty gritty of all these new songs. The one thing that I came away from it was it sounds like this album was written and recorded as if it was going to be competing with all the new bands that are out now. It’s just as fresh and revitalised as anything that’s coming out now, I mean were you guys kind of aware of how it would sound compared to some of the modern bands at all?
Jeff: Not at all, I’m always going to write like me. It’s still me and I honestly tried to do something different on this album and I think I did but I always sound like me, everything I do sounds like me so I guess this is just me being me. But no I’m not trying to compete with anybody, I know that every band is already great in their own unique way so why try to copy that, why not just be myself.
Andrew: Yeah sure and obviously it’s been a long time since you have been involved in writing new Possessed material so what has it been like for you to get back into the whole creative process again then?
Jeff: Possessed never really left my heart. In fact when the first guys quit on me, my intention was to immediately return to Possessed and unfortunately I got shot twice. So I really wanted to get back and lose the recklessness that I had before, mature and go to college and do the sort of things that I was always kind of afraid to do and then come back to music when it’s not the only thing I had but I wanted to make sure that it was the best and most thing I wanted to do in life. So I was right the whole time, I proved to myself that what’s most important to me is Possessed and of course Possessed got me through some very dark times, the thousands of letters and fan mails and support really got me through a lot and in many ways I owe them my life because seriously the first 5 years after I got shot was very touch and go. Then it was just a kind of a process of getting my head and mind right, I did some other side projects with other bands so I never really left the scene but for the most part I was doing my own thing and preparing and then getting ready to where it felt right again. So in 2007 we started touring the old stuff a decade before these guys became Possessed as much as anybody else I jammed with about 25 members later, it just took me a long time to find the right guys and do the album justice where it felt right.
Andrew: Yeah obviously it was a long process before you kind of found the right time to do this but was there a particular moment at all before you decided to bring the band back that you thought this was the right time? How long did it take before you realized this was the thing you wanted to do again?
Jeff: I guess around 2006 and like I said I had done side projects but the guys in Sadistic Intent said, “Hey we’re doing a Possessed tribute album and how would you like to come in and do The Exorcist as a guest vocalist, that would be really cool right?’, and Cannibal Corpse and Amon Amarth and Vader and just so many killer bands on this tribute album. So me and my fiance drove down there and made a trip of it and partied out and I sang the vocals and it felt right to get back and then we were discussing this and that and they said, ‘How about coming to this…we’re doing this series of three shows in Hollywood and you can come in as a guest vocalist on the last three songs, people would go crazy’. So I was hesitant about the wheelchair and whether people would be accepting, believe it or not in the 80’s I don’t think it would of worked but people have really grown in acceptance and tolerance over the years and so I went up there and kind of dipped my toe in the water and did a few songs with Sadistic Intent backing me up and the fans went fucking nuts! It was fucking mayhem and that’s when I knew I wanted to come back so we started organizing and practicing and doing it full time for a band. Then of course we were playing in Drop D and not playing the songs exactly right, I knew that Sadistic had their thing going and Possessed was more like a side project but I felt it was both taking away from each band so we split amicably and that’s when I really focused on putting together the core, real Possessed again so that took some time.
Andrew: It’s amazing because Possessed are one of those bands, certainly to me anyway that grew up listening to your music back in the day, that has had a huge influence on so many bands and over the years the band has I guess developed a bit of a cult following among the death metal fans. How does it feel to be part of a legacy that has been a huge influence on so many bands over the years?
Jeff: When you say cult, that’s a very good description because Possessed is one of those bands that doesn’t sell millions of albums, it doesn’t make tons of money. It’s very underground still, 99.99 percent of the world has no fucking clue who Possessed are so I love the fact that…I mean of course we would love if more people listened to Possessed but it’s death metal so people either love it or they hate it, it’s just a controversial band. All I want to do is make good music and entertain as many people as possible and really finish my story that was cut off so abruptly so many years ago and I feel like I’m just starting out. I always feel like I’m just starting out and so it’s when a lot of bands are retiring, I’m just starting.
Read the review of Revelations Of Oblivion
Andrew: Well it’s good to see you back anyway and as I said, these new songs just blew me away, they are so good. It obviously has that trademark Possessed sound but was there anything in particular that you were trying to achieve with these new songs at all?
Jeff: Just try to write the best songs as possible. More shit hit the scrap room floor than to the album, we just picked what we believe would be the best 10 songs, almost an hour of music there that kind of give a variation. So it’s not all just one thing, we tried to mix it up. We call it giving people a breather, I guess if we just played 10 back to back it would be exhausting. So we tried to mix it up and then with a story, like a beginning, a middle and an end like a little novelette and just make it as entertaining as possible, as heavy as possible without cheating just using blast beats and singing about cross fucking nuns in a crypt. It’s kind of a no cheater album and we tried to put as much musicality and really pay respect to the intelligence of our fans.
Andrew: Yeah definitely it’s amazing stuff. So what does the future hold for Possessed then? Now with the album coming out next month, what is the plan for you guys?
Jeff: Right now I’m doing a lot of promo and interviews and promo shoots. I just shot my first promo video last Saturday, we’re doing a documentary and just a lot of gearing up for the album. I got the European tour planned in June and I got the US tour in September, I got a possible Fall tour with some big band and thinking about going to Australia in 2020 and usually just try and keep on touring while writing the second album because we happen to have a contract to start to write for the next album. So just keeping busy as fuck and enjoying life and kind of enjoying a long awaited…we’ve been around since 2007, people are just noticing us so it feels good.
Andrew: Yeah I guess it’s been a while since you started bringing this together but it’s only now that people have started to notice the fact that you guys are back. It must be a great feeling to have done so much work and to finally be at the tail end of the release of these new songs.
Jeff: You have no idea what it took to make this album, I mean I could tell you but you would never understand. I spent 10 years bed ridden, I got sick in 2007. I spent 10 years in bed healing up, I spent years of my life in a hospital. Now I’m ready to go of course, I’m healthy and ready to go but other than that, writing and just been a long bit of work, years and years of work and it’s always seemed like a struggle so it feels really good to get this out. It’s almost like many times I thought as long as I could get out one more album I could die in peace and I’ve always said I’m going to die at 50 my entire life but now that I got the album out and I’m 50, I’m like fuck that, I hope I got at least another 20 or 30 years left in me. So I always gotta keep writing and playing and keep putting the best quality music out and hopefully make people enjoy our music.
Andrew: Yeah definitely so look forward to hearing what people say when the album does finally come out. So I do want to ask you, as a band who has had a huge influence on so many extreme metal bands out there and you have said that you have still kept in touch with the metal scene over the years, and compared to back in the day in the 80’s when extreme bands were starting to come out and with the genre taking all kinds of different turns becoming more extreme and more technical, what’s your view on extreme metal these days and do you think that we’ve kind of come to an end point as far as how heavy music can actually get?
Jeff: Well I guess the race to the bottom were, after Possessed a lot of bands would come out and say, ‘Oh we’re even heavier than Possessed’ or ‘We’re the new heaviest band around’. Because back when Possessed created death metal, we were easily the heaviest band on the planet but soon after that became heavier and heavier and heavier. Now I think it’s impossible, I call it a race to the bottom but what we are seeing is a lot of different variations that call themselves death metal and I think that’s great with some wonderful writing. I’m not sure about naming sub-genres of death metal, I would just love to see death metal, which it has, become a wider variety of what is possible rather than just being buttholed into being a specific set of rules.
Death metal is more of an attitude and more of like doing whatever the fuck you want and however you want, whenever you want to fucking do it, and so I recognise all death metal as various art forms of death metal and I think it gives death metal a chance of survival. Even though it may seem like death metal would never die, I always feel like it’s on the verge of disappearing because certain people think, certain purists think that death metal has to be blast beats and cookie monster and that’s not true at all. Death metal is a spirituality and something that comes from within and so I think there’s a lot of bands out there that really did it and are creating some really fantastic music. I’m proud of them all, I love the fact that death metal lives on through each and every new death metal band.
Andrew: Do you think then that there are too many rules placed on the whole metal genre? Because it does seem like sometimes that anytime a band strays away a little bit from the sound that people get sort of up in arms about it.
Jeff: I think that people have yet to understand the meaning of death metal, I mean not truly. A lot of people do understand what death metal is but from the beginning when we named our brand of music death metal, the media, the press, the fans, they would not recognise it. They would call us thrash, they would call us anything but death metal because it was just unheard of, they couldn’t differentiate thrash from death metal or black metal and I guess it’s very hard for certain people. To me and to people like us it’s easy to tell what death metal is but to some people, they don’t get it because they don’t understand the music enough and I think that people just need a better understanding of what the truth of death metal is. The freedom to do what the fuck you want, it isn’t about rules. It can be about rules if you want it to be about rules but it doesn’t always have to be.
Andrew: Yeah I definitely agree and I think death metal there’s an attitude there that I think with some people, you either get it or you don’t I suppose.
Jeff: Yeah death metal in large part is thrash and black metal mixed together. The satanic lyrics, the dark, evil music but the fast drums, it is born of something earlier but yet unique in and of itself and the fun part of death metal is kind of making it your own.
Andrew: Yeah and I mean it must have been crazy when you guys first started, what kind of feedback did you get back in the day? Because obviously that kind of music wasn’t really around at that time when you first started so what was it like at that time?
Jeff: Most people thought we were nuts. A lot of people laughed or turned their backs on us or walked out but more and more especially after the demo came out, our audience from punks to hardcore and extreme metal heads started really getting it and caught on real fast. I think it was just the right time for it, or I think maybe it was even a bit early but we did get a hardcore following and those people that got it, loved it and those people that didn’t, hated it and continued to hate it.
Revelations Of Oblivion is out May 10th through Nuclear Blast
Get Revelations Of Oblivion on iTunes
