Possessed frontman and death metal pioneer Jeff Becerra has revealed that the band’s highly anticipated new album is nearly complete, and he has offered a tantalizing and slightly ominous warning to fans: it’s “a whole different animal.” In a new interview, he admitted he is unsure how the new, “different” material will be received.
Speaking with Australia’s Devil’s Horns Zine, Becerra gave a concrete update on the follow-up to the band’s acclaimed 2019 comeback album, Revelations Of Oblivion.
“I’m working on the last three sets of lyrics, and then the album is finished,” Becerra confirmed (via Blabbermouth), before cautioning fans to expect the unexpected. “And it’s a trip. It’s a whole different animal. I don’t know if people will love it or hate it. I hope they love it. It’s different. It’s definitely different.”
This is not the first time Becerra has hinted at a new direction for the legendary band. In an interview last year, he described the new songs as “very cool, very heavy” and promised the album would feature “a lot more tempo switching.” He also stated it would probably be one of their “darkest albums,” while assuring fans of the band’s unwavering integrity. “Possessed will never sell out,” he declared at the time. “I’d rather die.”
The new material is a collaborative effort from a lineup that has now been together for over a decade.
“We all write. I think I wrote 63 or 64 percent of the last album,” Becerra explained. “Me and Dan [guitarist Daniel Gonzalez] are kind of the main guys, but more and more, on this one you’re seeing Claudeous [Creamer, guitarist] and Robert [Cardenas, bassist] coming out and showing off the riffs… This version of Possessed has been around more than three times as long as the first one, so we work well together. And they’re not afraid to say, ‘Hey, no, this is not good,’ to me and vice versa. We’re all super picky about what we do.”
The new album will be the second full-length from Possessed since Becerra resurrected the band in 2007. His remarkable comeback story, which saw him return to music after a 1989 armed robbery left him partially paralyzed, is one of the most inspiring in heavy metal history.
