29 Jul 2016

Possession: "Anneliese"


Roughed-up and scar-faced metal brawl
In 2013 the newly formed band Possession hailing from Belgium released their first demo His Best Deceit, causing quite a rucous in the heavy metal underground. They were lauded for breathing some semblence of life back into deathly black metal with talented mixtures of high and low tempo cuts under the signs of death, black and thrash metal. Welding torch vocals cutting through a backdrop of drop hammer drums and hellishly sawing guitars aplenty, His Best Deceit sparked enormous interest in the band and the scene.


They had clearly struck a chord with the heavy metal audience, but can they do it again? 2014 was the year when Possession decided to follow up on the promises of satanic might they had made the year before. They've showed up at your front door with nailed clubs, chains, bullet belts, and even two new tracks in the form of Anneliese, the title track, and Apparition. The new EP delivers a vicious figurative beating in the form of these two leather-clad compositions from the same mold that spawned their demo. Again, slower sections and faster tendencies are given equal time with Anneliese representing the former, and Apparition the latter.

"The trade-off between the absence of memorable riffs in exchange for a more brutal rhythm section unfortunately doesn't quite come to the Belgians' advantage."

However, Anneliese simply displays more of the same that His Best Deceit did, but this time around Possession doesn't have the same element of surprise on their side. The trade-off between the absence of memorable riffs in exchange for a more brutal rhythm section unfortunately doesn't quite come to the Belgians' advantage. The EP never really comes into its own, and instead trudges around in banal piles of alternating fast and slow tremolo-picking. Both tracks build up to a great smorgasbord of trashed out metal, but the promises are never completely fulfilled.

6/10


Released in 2014 by Iron Bonehead Records

Links

No comments:

Post a Comment