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METAL MONDAY VOL. 19 

Possessed - Seven Churches is more or less the blueprint for how to make a death metal album, and is commonly accepted as the first full length vinyl release by a death metal band.  All the key aspects are in place by 1985.

• Growled/low vocals
• opening the record with the theme from a horror movie/ambient keyboards
• fixation on Satanic themes
• ridiculous technical guitar riffing
• horrible type-writer sounding drums.

Possessed are extra cool because they are really young on Seven Churches, I think guitarist Larry LaLonde (who later got rich as a member of Primus), is like 15 or 16 on this. Their drummer certainly sounds like he’s wet behind the ears, but the rest of the band puts in an admirable performance and are setting a standard. The somewhat questionable cavernous echo that fills the record out is courtesy of producer Randy Burns who went on to record the equally influential debut by Death “Scream Bloody Gore”. Together those 2 lps defined an era, and created a starting point for thousands of hopeless youths around the globe. The kind of kids you saw sneaking cigarettes and zimas behind the grocery in your home town. They had dirt lip mustaches and had seen Phantasm and Evil Dead more times than they’d been to math class. Dirts. Skids. In 1985, this was their calling.

Here’s a sealed copy just like you would have found it in the store then.