Written by San Francisco veterans Possessed have more claim than most to be the founding fathers of death metal – not only were they pushing metal to new extremes back in the mid-80s, they even gave the genre its name via their 1985 song Death Metal. In 2019, as they prepared to release their first album in more than 30 years, mainman Jeff Becerra looked back on a career defined by brutality – and near tragedy.
“We were on a mission to be the heaviest band on the planet,” says Possessed singer and bassist Jeff Becerra. “And that’s what we were.”
He’s not lying. In fact, Jeff Becerra invented death metal. And remarkably, he invented it in 1979, writing what would become the first Possessed song – Burning In Hell – at the age of 11.
After passing through a few bands as an excitable adolescent, including Blizzard, Jeff joined three school friends to form Possessed in 1983. Full of youthful bravado, Jeff and his comrades were united in a desire to push metal into more extreme territory than ever before: faster, heavier, nastier and more intense than even the nascent thrash movement could muster. If Slayer were scaring lots of people in LA, Possessed were hell-bent on being the Bay Area band that could scare Slayer.
“We wanted to do something that was heavier, more crazy and extreme than anything we’d heard,” says Jeff. “There was speed metal and thrash metal and black metal, so let’s call Possessed a death metal band! I wrote the song Death Metal to make a statement, that we were the first to do it. We wanted to be different.”
Released in October 1985, Possessed’s debut album Seven Churches was one hell of an opening statement. Adorned with the Satanic imagery that Venom had brought to metal only a few years earlier, and sounding like a sustained screech of infernal rage from the bowels of Hades, Seven Churches was instantly hailed as a classic by fans of the burgeoning metal underground.
All these years later, it’s impossible to deny its colossal impact and influence. As Jeff cheerfully notes, the late, great Chuck Schuldiner often cited Possessed as inspiration for his own pioneering musical efforts with Death. And while other bands had a similar impact on the genre’s later evolution, death metal’s entire vocabulary can ultimately be traced back to a bunch of songs written by these San Francisco teens in the early 80s.
Seven Churches is where death metal began. And even though Possessed released two more well-received records before their split in 1987 – Beyond The Gates (1986) and The Eyes Of Horror EP (1987) – it is for Seven Churches that Jeff and co are most celebrated.
We wanted to do something that was heavier, more crazy and extreme than anything we’d heard.
Jeff Becerra
“A lot of people feel that way, but the truth is that the second record outsold Seven Churches and it’s the highest-selling Possessed record,” Jeff says. “I like the second one more. But with the first album we were just going buck wild and trying to make a statement.
“You can’t fake that kind of intensity and debut records are unique in that way, aren’t they? But I tried to make every album different, so that death metal could become this all-encompassing thing. I’m proud of all of it.”
The end of Possessed’s first chapter in 1987 came as a shock to their growing army of fans. As Jeff explains, his bandmates – guitarists Mike Torrao and Larry LaLonde (who’d soon join Primus) and drummer Mike Sus – began to struggle with the rigours of being in an increasingly popular band, and despite the frontman’s efforts to keep things on track, a parting of ways was unavoidable.
“Doing this can be a tough life,” Jeff shrugs. “There isn’t any money in it and a lot of people need that security in their lives. So I understood and I still understand that it’s not for everyone.
“I still think that if we’d stayed together, it could have worked and we could’ve done a lot of great things. But I couldn’t make them stay. It was heartbreaking. But I didn’t want to be in a band with anyone that didn’t want to be there. Fate had other ideas anyway, right?”
Aside from his largely undisputed status as the creator of death metal, the fact most people know about Jeff Becerra is that he’s been in a wheelchair for 30 years. As he points out, he’s been in a wheelchair for longer than he was ever not in one and is happy to regale us with the full, horrifying story of how he sustained his injuries.
The short version is that in 1989 he was mugged outside a store and shot from close range. A bullet lodged in his spine and paralysed him from the chest down, taking out a lung and several ribs in the process. Still fearing for his life as his assailants fled the scene, he managed to pull himself across the pavement and roll under a parked car, where he waited for several hours before the police and emergency services arrived.
Not surprisingly, from that moment on Jeff’s life was turned upside down and playing death metal was no longer the priority it once was. Survival was all that mattered, both physical and emotional.
“I moved into a new apartment while I was getting used to everything,” he recalls. “It was like being in jail for five years. It was lonely. I was surrounded by prostitutes, bikers and drug dealers. It wasn’t the ideal environment for anyone, but especially for someone in my position.
“I spent five years just doing drugs and getting fucked up on alcohol. I came pretty close to dying, to be honest. But in the end, after I sobered up a little, a friend of mine, who was also in recovery, convinced me that I should go back to college. He basically told me to grow the fuck up.”
I spent five years just doing drugs and getting fucked up on alcohol. I came pretty close to dying, to be honest.
Jeff Becerra
First he quit drink and drugs and then recommitted to education, acing a course at junior college then studying Labor Studies (a mixture of labour law, economics and civil/workers’ rights) at San Francisco State University, passing everything with flying colours.
Newly qualified, he subsequently spent a decade working in a hospital and being heavily involved in labour union. Along the way, Jeff fell in love, got married and had two children. But in the back of his mind, the urge to resurrect Possessed and to pick up where the band left off remained and eventually proved irresistible.
“I definitely always wanted to get the band back together, but there were some things I really needed to take care of first. I needed to straighten my life out in many ways, and that’s what I did.”
Possessed officially returned in 2007, a comeback sparked when Jeff was invited to perform guest vocal duties with LA death metal crew Sadistic Intent on a cover of Seven Churches’ classic opener, The Exorcist.
Suitably impressed with the way the band performed his own classic material, Jeff decided to bring his band back to life with his new associates’ assistance. A skull-cracking new album, Revelations Of Oblivion, followed in 2019 – a ferocious reclaiming of the death metal throne, full of newly minted hellish anthems and that unmistakable Possessed atmosphere, with Jeff’s feral bark front and centre, just as Satan intended.
“There are a million bands out there playing death metal,” he concludes. “Some of the bands out there are so insanely brutal and fast, it’s almost a different style of music! But whatever happens, we’re still Possessed. This is still death metal. And life is good.”
Originally published in Metal Hammer issue 322 (April 2019)
