Seven Churches
| Seven Churches | ||||
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| Studio album by Possessed | ||||
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Publication |
October 16, 1985 |
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| Label (s) | Combat Records | |||
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Format (s) |
LP, CD |
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Title (number) |
10 |
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running time |
39:14 |
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| occupation |
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Randy Burns, Barry Kobrin |
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Studio (s) |
Prairie Sun |
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Seven Churches is the debut album by the American metal band Possessed . It is considered to be one of the groundbreaking albums in Death Metal , not least because the genre name is often traced back to the track of the same name on the album. However, she was also the title of a 1984 Noise Records published Split -LP with, among others, Hellhammer and is also before the publication of Seven Churches in Punk - Fanzine maximumrocknroll , as the name deathmetalers for the followers of this music.
Emergence
In 1984 Brian Slagel of Metal Blade Records became aware of the band and they contributed a song to the label sampler Metal Massacre . However, Slagel did not want to sign the band. The reasons for this were the provocative image and the lack of playing skills of the second guitarist Brian Montana, who was replaced a little later by Larry LaLonde . Due to the band's live presence, other record labels became interested in them, and eventually the musicians chose Combat Records . The main reason was that they got an advance payment from the label. Because all band members were between 16 and 17 years old at the time and still went to school, the recordings for the album took place during the Easter break in 1985 at Prairie Sun Studios in San Francisco under the direction of Randy Burns. Jeff Becerra later said of the studio:
“To this day I only call the record“ Seven Chickens ”... The studio was located on a chicken farm, and whenever we started playing, the whole pack would run wildly to the opposite side of the yard. Horses do the same when they hear death metal. This music sounds completely unnatural to her. "
The titles of the debut album were already composed and written. Becerra had written death metal during his English class at high school, the name he chose because the song title was already taken from Black Metal . In 1982 the band Venom had released a track of this name on their album , also titled . This track as well as Evil Warriors and Burning in Hell were featured on the 1984 demo. Fallen Angel was also included on various unofficial versions of the 1984 demo and was originally recorded in one take at the end of the recording session for this demo . The band had already played The Exorcist and Satan's Curse live, the other tracks were finished, but were revised for the album. The title track Seven Churches was the only one on whose music Larry LaLonde contributed.
There were various suggestions for the album cover . The band's preferred design was of a church with windows adorned with pentagrams and St. Peter's crosses. Next to it was a tree from which a nun was hanging, and in front of it was tombstones with the names of the band members. For lack of money, however, the band decided on the simpler variant, which shows the band's logo in front of an upside-down cross and with a devil's tail. The title of the album comes from the English name for the Seven Churches of the Apocalypse .
On October 16, 1985, Seven Churches was released in the US and Europe (here by Roadrunner Records ) and is still one of the best-selling albums by Combat Records.
Style and image
To underline the intensity of their music, the band gave themselves a satanic image. The musicians combined the anti-Christian content and symbols of bands like Slayer or Celtic Frost with striking symbolism like purgatory and adapted the piano intro of the first part of Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells , also known from the film The Exorcist , as the intro of the first Title of the album. The title Fallen Angel is introduced by somber bells.
A novelty of the genre was Jeff Becerra's singing style, which sounded much rougher and more extreme than anything that has been published in Thrash Metal so far. The style came about by chance when Becerra tried to imitate the vocals of Cronos (Venom) and Tom Araya (Slayer). The releases of bands such as Venom, Slayer or Celtic Frost were regarded as musical role models. The band renounced the common sequence of verse / chorus and the placement of a guitar solo at the end of a song, which is common in heavy metal . In addition, little emphasis was placed on melodies in favor of the speed of guitar or bass playing. The music is characterized by staccato rhythms and power chords . Larry LaLonde's solos are fast played, the speed is achieved by broken chords . Mike Sus's drumming has many fills and snare rolls , and makes accentuated use of the cymbals . The bass is mostly mixed in the background.
reception
The album was received largely positively by fans and critics alike, but it did not gain its status as a milestone in the genre or as the first officially released death metal album until years later. In a contemporary review in 1985 in Rock Hard , the reviewer Götz Kühnemund classified the band as hardcore , while the Kerrang! the quartet's music is said to have compared with it, as if you were chained to the launch pad of the space shuttle during the launch.
Years later, Ed Rivadavia called the album the " missing link " between Thrash and Death Metal, Martin Loga from Powermetal.de called the album an "immortal classic of this genre". Other critics attest to the album's lack of musical finesse, because the songs all followed a uniform pattern and would be confusingly similar. In addition, the texts would read as if a couple of teenagers had written their version of the Satanic Bible . Another point of criticism was Mike Sus's sometimes awkward-looking drumming.
The satanic image and the anti-Christian lyrics of the album made negative headlines . The musicians found this image appropriate because it was hip in the scene and, in their opinion, underlines the harshness of the music:
“It was definitely no drugs, because we were to young, and we weren't really into that. We knew of Venom and Black Sabbath, but it was just before Slayer. Everybody was into the occult in a way but didn't know too much about it. It just looked cool, and it was tough. "
“It definitely had nothing to do with drugs, we were too young for that and we just didn't like it. We knew Venom and Black Sabbath , but it was before Slayer. Everyone was kind of into the occult without knowing much about it. It was just cool and brutal. "
Becerra also pointed out that all band members except Larry Lalonde had a Catholic upbringing and that he himself was not sure whether there was a God or Satan , but that he was interested in Satanism and the occult and collected books with Hell (' Hell ') in the title .
Re-releases
The album was re-released several times, for example by Roadracer Records as part of the “Price Killers” series, but without a supplement . The German label Century Media first released a CD version of the album in 1998 and a box with five EPs in 2003 , followed by an LP with a gatefold cover on Monumentum Records in 2007.
Track list
- The Exorcist (Music / Text: Mike Torrao)
- Pentagram (Music: Mike Torrao / Text Jeff Becerra)
- Burning in Hell (Music: Mike Torrao / Text Jeff Becerra)
- Evil Warriors (Music: Mike Torrao / Text Jeff Becerra)
- Seven Churches (Music: Mike Torrao, Larry LaLonde / Text Jeff Becerra)
- Satan's Curse (Music / Text: Mike Torrao)
- Holy Hell (Music: Mike Torrao / Text Jeff Becerra)
- Twisted Minds (Music / Text: Mike Torrao)
- Fallen Angel (Music: Mike Torrao / Text Jeff Becerra)
- Death Metal (Music: Mike Torrao / Text Jeff Becerra)
Individual evidence
- ^ Keith Kahn-Harris: Extreme metal: music and culture on the edge . Berg Publishers, 2007, ISBN 978-1-84520-399-3 , pp. 3 .
- ↑ Piero Scaruffi : A History of Rock Music: 1951-2000 . iUniverse, 2003, ISBN 978-0-595-29565-4 , pp. 277 .
- ↑ Running Wild , Hellhammer , Dark Avenger, Helloween : Death Metal , Noise Records 1984.
- ↑ Pushead : Speedcore ( memento of the original from March 6, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . In: Maximumrocknroll , No. 22, February 1985, p. 60.
- ↑ Letter to the editor ( Memento of the original from January 22, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. by Gene Hoglan in Maximumrocknroll , No. 25, June 1985, 10f.
- ↑ a b c Frank Stöver: POSSESSED. Voices from the Darkside, accessed May 10, 2009 .
- ^ A b Albert Mudrian: Choosing Death: The Incredible Story of Death Metal & Grindcore . IP Verlag, Berlin 2006, ISBN 978-3-931624-35-4 , pp. 58 .
- ↑ Possessed - Where Are They Now? (No longer available online.) Metal-rules.com, June 2001, archived from the original on May 22, 2011 ; accessed on May 10, 2009 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ Natalie J. Purcell: Death Metal music: the passion and politics of a subculture . McFarland, 2003, ISBN 978-0-7864-1585-4 , pp. 40 .
- ^ Natalie J. Purcell: Death Metal music: the passion and politics of a subculture . McFarland, 2003, ISBN 978-0-7864-1585-4 , pp. 54 .
- ↑ Jeff Kitts: Hell On Wheels . In: Guitar World . October 2008, p. 44 ff .
- ↑ Götz Kühnemund : Possessed . Seven Churches. In: Rock Hard . No. 13 ( rockhard.de [accessed on September 23, 2014]).
- ↑ Shan Siva: Interview: Jeff Becerra. (No longer available online.) Battle Helm Magazine Online, archived from the original on August 15, 2014 ; accessed on October 7, 2012 (English). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Ed Rivadavia: Seven Churches - Possessed. Allmusic , accessed on May 12, 2009 .
- ^ Martin Loga: Possessed - Seven Churches. powermetal.de, accessed on May 12, 2009 .
- ^ Possessed - Seven Churches. sputnikmusic.com, accessed May 12, 2009 .
- ↑ POSSESSED - Seven Churches. The Metal Observer, accessed May 12, 2009 .
- ^ Ian Christe: Sound of the Beast. The Complete Headbanging History of Heavy Metal . ItBooks, 2003, p. 244 .
