Exumer
Possessed by Fire

We were a handful of sixteen-year-olds with long hair, patchy beards, and black T-shirts. We liked the same music, and that, perhaps, was the best thing that could have happened to us. 
In our heads, buzzing between our ears, we had Slayer and the triad, Forbidden and Dark Angel, and a hundred other bands that others had never heard of. We gave up everything, or almost everything, for records: "Endless Pain" was worth a "screw you" from our girlfriend, exasperated by yet another Saturday night spent in some flea-ridden pub with cheap beer, "Persecution Mania" a few weeks of scrounging cigarettes. Because there was no internet, no Mule, and no E-Bay. There were those sad and boring jobs that have always fallen to those who are dirt poor, there were old turntables that sounded better than modern ones, and there was a whole strange network of albums copied onto recycled and worn-out cassettes, worse than a pair of underwear after two weeks of camping.

From that period, I have little left: some shirts less worn than others to dig out for the increasingly rare metal concerts I allow myself, a drawer full of photos, ticket stubs, a few newspaper clippings. Only the music has really stayed: it's still out there somewhere, worse than a mosquito that won't stop bothering me, and even though I now listen to those records increasingly rarely, there are some I still love to pull out from the barn, which, more than anything else, help me remember that period.

Released in the legendary 1986, "Possessed By Fire" is the debut album of Exumer, a very young quartet from Frankfurt am Main, formed just a year earlier at the behest of the slight frontman Mem Von Stein (bass and vocals): a certainly raw, imperfect album, which is hardly worthy of the title of "masterpiece," but which over time has managed to establish itself as one of the most convincing sonic testimonies of the era, as well as one of the best debut albums of the entire German thrash metal scene. Based on certainly aggressive and fast riffing, but never reaching extreme peaks of sonic ferocity, built on a technique certainly not stellar but still able to "organize" and give rationality to the compositions just enough to keep them from being chaotic, "Possessed By Fire" reveals itself, from the very first listen, as an album that makes the immediacy of the compositions its strength. Take the brilliant title track, an excellent example of quick-grab '80s thrash metal, where the listener is especially struck by the performance of the unleashed Mem: one of the rawest and roughest voices of the time, clearly intent on continuing down the path of vocal savagery traced by the late maestro Baloff. A "broken" and absolutely not technical singing, so exaggerated that it cannot be contained within the metric constraints of the lyrics, which, though it may cause the more refined to wrinkle their noses, will certainly delight the anvils of aficionados of rougher sounds.

In short, a good album, entirely a child of the times and places in which it came to light, but which finds its weak point in a widespread lack of originality or, rather, in a sort of "excess of derivativeness" in the musical proposition (after all, even the artwork is clearly indebted—although the band has always denied it—to the figure of the ill-fated Jason Voorhees). From a compositional point of view, indeed, the album provides few surprises: if on one side, the work of the two axes Siedler and Mensch can easily be traced to what was indicated by the big names of the overseas scene (first Exodus above all), it is the echoing of tritones and certain early Slayer sounds in particular that give the tracks a widespread feeling of "already heard," whether it's the melodic break of the excellent "Sorrows Of Judgement" and "Destruction Solution" (whose opening "hints" not too subtly to that of "Fight Till Death"), the chorus of "Fallen Saint" (identical to the opening of "Black Magic"), or certain hellish nuances of some rhythms à la "Hell Awaits."

Willing to turn a blind eye to such "quotations," and in partial defense of Von Stein and company, it must still be acknowledged that the compositions of the quartet possess a certain variety: next to more direct tracks, which make speed their strength (the aforementioned title track, "Destructive Solution", the excellent "Xiron Darkstar"), there are others set on medium ("Reign Of Sadness") and medium-slow tempos ("Mortal In Black"), which, while not highlights of the album, certainly do not look out of place. Overall, the album, thanks especially to the good work of Syke Bornetto behind the drums, benefits from a certain care in arrangement and can count on some melodic/narrative (ironically) interludes ("Sorrows Of The Judgement") and even acoustic ones ("Destructive Solution"), which, at least partially, distance the band's sound from the more uncompromising clichés of the genre.

Nothing truly original, therefore, nothing that can really make one scream for a miracle, yet...

Yet it's as if, among these black grooves of vinyl, something more than the racket a bass, a couple of guitars, and a drum can produce has been imprinted. Something that, even today, when I listen to this album, gives me that peaty aftertaste that only good memories have: it's that naive and sincere enthusiasm of someone entering a recording studio still carrying a bit of the dampness of the basement where they've practiced for months, that tingling that takes your fingers when you think that every note you play will be recorded somewhere for everyone to hear. There's that strange sensation, which you occasionally have the fortune to encounter, of listening to the music of someone who, while playing, is having a blast: the music of a handful of kids with long hair, patchy beards, and black T-shirts.