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Possessor

Possessor

London’s Possessor should be a familiar name to any fan of the low down heavies in the UK by now.

Forged since their inception via an EP and a flurry of full lengths, Possessor haven’t sat about waiting at any point. Nor have they ever seemed a band to place constraints upon themselves, feeling free to pick and choose from the extensive buffet of heavy music and meshing it all together into something spectacular; when was the last time you saw grunge and black metal approached with equal confidence on one single release?

Their last release, 2019’s Gravelands [APF020] was the first to feature bassist Ellie Mathews (also of Fuckjar) in the trio, and was a welcome shakeup to the Possessor energy. The band playing on Gravelands felt reinvigorated compared with that which appeared on 2017’s The Ripper, and it shone throughout the album. In particular, standout track ‘Breathe Fire’ sounded like it could have been at home on any of those Man’s Ruin releases from the noughties and that’s only ever a good thing.

2020 was meant to see Possessor take to the stage at Desertfest, as one of the first acts announced alongside legends such as Masters of Reality, Corrosion of Conformity and Orange Goblin - and deservedly so at that. But then the COVID pandemic hit. So Graham and new drummer Nathan Perrier (also of 11Paranoias) got working on new material, swapping ideas via mobile phone messages and emails. Soon they had an album licked, and returned to Bear Bites Horse Studio in London in July with producer Wayne Adams to lay down these monstrous new tracks. 

With Ellie retiring from bass duties, four-stringer Mark Brereton (a founding member of Possessor) re-joined the band following the release of the album Damn The Light, which dropped on APF Records Halloween 2020.

At the end of 2021 the trio went into Cro's Nest Studio with engineer Sam Thredder (of Slabdragger fame) to lay down a final EP, The Speed Of Death, to be released January 2022. After 8 years together, they felt the time was right to pursue other creative avenues. The Speed Of Death is a fitting epitaph to one of the country's most excting and engaging bands.

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