I've never heard the original Sepultura recordings but when the new re recorded tracks assaulted my ears I was blown away in the same way I was when I finally heard Accept for the first time a couple days ago. The riffs, the drumming, the power, and the guitar sounds...yikes! Some the the sickest metal tones I have ever heard. Max and Igor have delivered something very special. From what I've read, the reactions from their fans are very positive. Possessed guitarist Daniel Gonzalez recorded lead guitar on these albums and good grief that dude is a monster. I wish I had ten percent of that guy's talent.
I didn't know that Possessed inspired Death's music:
Chuck Schuldiner, who had relocated his band Death to the Bay Area to write Scream Bloody Gore with Chris Reifert, in tandem with Possessed's rise, told magazine Metal Maniacs:
Possessed was different from all the other bands who were coming out at that time. They weren't pure noise, and they attempted to incorporate a lot of different musical ideas into their songwriting, not just rehash the same thing. They were into progressing as a band, which paved the way for other groups to expand their sound and do different things.[41]
In the book Choosing Death, Mantas/Death drummer Kam Lee called Possessed the first death metal band, and added:
When we were in Mantas, (Chuck Schuldiner, Rick Rozz and myself) still had a more Venom/Motörhead sound kinda going on. And then I remember Chuck getting the Possessed demo, and I just remember hearing it and just freaking out like, 'Man, this is the way we gotta be.'[42]
Author Daniel Ekeroth expanded on Lee's assessment of the 1984 Death Metal demo in his book, Swedish Death Metal:
Unlike virtually all other contemporary bands, Possessed left the Venom/Motörhead touches behind, creating "symphonic" tunes, and combining loads of complex riffs and drum patterns with the rawest sounds and fastest paces imaginable...Becerra took his vocal style one step beyond anything the world had heard before, as he seemed to scream and grunt at the same time. All these ideas would later be considered trademarks of death metal, and Possessed's demo has since generally been considered the first pure death metal recording.[43]
I went to their show last night. Overall it was great! The openers were awesome, the energy was high, the crowd was pumped.
The only beef I had was the guitar tone for Cavalera. While I don't know their backline was, a) there were no amps on stage and b) the guitar tone was fizzy, lifeless & had no push or definition. Adding up the evidence I bet they were using modelers.
Exhumed was running a 6505+ and a VTM120 and their tone was on point!
