Venom
Possessed

THE REVIEW

If I had to make a list of bands that give me a bit of a scare (seriously), I would have to crown Venom. Without getting lost in chatter, throwing down the usual lines about how this band "invented" black metal (a genre that honestly doesn't fascinate me at all), I'll get straight to the point with my two-bit explanations. Venom came from the trash, became famous by mixing punk nonsense with formulas extracted from the little satanist's manual, and created great turmoil without really knowing much, but expressed through their ramblings more than they intended to.

Putting aside suicidal depression, enchanted groves, and freshly straightened tender hair, Venom smoked cigars and acted tough with motorcycles, concluding that Cronos, Abaddon, and Mantas could only do two things in life: either form Venom or sweep trash for the rest of their lives. Fortunately, it was the former fate that prevailed.

"Possessed" is the least considered Venom album. But personally, having accidentally listened to the band's latest works, I have to inevitably think that records like this are what I miss nowadays.

Ok, "Black Metal" and "Welcome to Hell" were on another planet, but even here we can listen to a lot of good material. They were this: a muddy rock n roll, extracted from its nature and made heavy and confusing. That was their style, and the fact that they recorded an album very similar to past works was not warmly welcomed by the public. I always find myself making the Venom - Ramones analogy, both bands adopted such an immediate and distinctive style that they became trapped in it; by changing it, the audience is traumatized, by staying the same, the audience gets bored to the point of snubbing good recordings like this "Possessed."

It is not true that they play tracks discarded from past works here; I hear a monstrous improvement on the execution side and a greater dark - progressive line (every now and then I love to throw in some absurd term). Abaddon is much more precise, and Mantas expresses technically much more than he managed to do in the past, the only one slightly demotivated in this whole story is Cronos, but with this, I certainly don't want to blame him for having put on a bad performance.

In my humble investigator's side, I believe that this work was one of the most plagiarized by Venom, as many bands have found excellent riffs to steal given the validity of the tracks and the album's limited distribution.

Among the standout tracks, I would highlight "Satanachist," "Mystique," "Too Loud," or "Possessed," but the fact is that I appreciate every single track.

In conclusion, I recommend everyone to dust off this album, perhaps ignoring the opinion of others, you will find listening a real pleasure in the "old Venom" style.