Gripped shoulder to shoulder as psychic poison is shot from mouth to ear and sent glinting throughout the brain the daimonian shaking served by Vancouver, British Colombia-based blackened death-thrash metal quartet REVERSED aims to revive ancient scenes of obscure horrors, terrifying energetic discharge, and unspeakable graveyard violence. Seizure after seizure their debut full-length album ‘Wildly Possessed‘ provides attitude and eccentricity appropriate for the 80’s extreme metal inspired sounds they rifle out herein, stalking and slashing through a personae well-matched with their own type of arcane, sometimes tuneful aggression. By putting in the time to develop their own stamp upon this well-treaded territory they’ve avoided a predictable result while still relaying the classic tension and volatility of the old ways in a purely entertaining manner.

Reversed formed circa 2015 between folks more recently known for their work in Spell, Auroch, and Egregore as a channel for their vision of death metal at its first axis of evolution beyond extreme thrash metal in the mid-to-late 80’s. Their work intends to exist in a timeless space where the lines were still blurred between black, death and thrash metal without aiming for a regressive or feigned devolution of their skills and as such they’ve generally focused on substantial songcraft with an 80’s extreme thrash spine. That isn’t to say that elements of heavy metal, speed metal, or heavy rock don’t find their points of fusion herein but that as we saw on thier debut demo (‘Widow Recluse‘, 2018) their approach is thrash-adjacent but still patient in developing a groove, a big riff, and a deranged vocal to carry it through. That said if you were to jump from that tape directly into this album it might sound like a completely different style/approach based on the production values applied and the general space occupied by its most key presence (vocals, drum sound, etc.) Precedence was more-or-less set then and there but moreso on the general pacing and some basic points of style it wasn’t until we’d gotten a demo-level preview of this new album (‘Promo 2022‘, 2022) a couple of years ago that it’d been clear what they were working up toward.

The suggestion is that Reversed wrote and sorted most of this album during the early pandemic years and their 2022 promo was a pretty deep-set suggestion of their progress as the two songs from that tape (“Rusted Breath”, “Hungry Graves”) also made it onto ‘Wildly Possessed‘ in similar form, albeit with different production values applied. Though we lose some of the clangor of those songs for the sake of a brighter clarified resonance with uglied-up guitar tones on the album itself the energetic burst of those pieces lend each a natural standout on the greater running order though it is “Hungry Graves” that serves the most compelling point of interest upon cursory pass-thru as its tuneful main riff and quasi-chorus lock in for a memorable statement. In this version a choir of voices ends the song ensuring you’ll not get too lost in your thoughts as the song blazes past and surprises at its endpoint. Granted this is after they’ve entrenched their gig in mud and steel with “Maelstrom Juggernaut” the hook, the roll, the neck-stabber, the song that lays it all out in plain enough terms that the blackened dramatism of their gig has some declarative strength to it but also death-thrashing riffs. I wouldn’t say these are harried, head-bursting speed demon songs up front but there should be some natural rush achieved within the many turns taken as ‘Wildly Possessed‘ rallies through its first half.

By the time we hit “Beneath Evil Eyes” the main narrative voice of Reversed‘s action has made itself clear enough and this becomes a strength and a point of focus as we begin to dip into the more unpredictable edge of their arrangements and simple vocal cadence. The central vocal performance provides a readable pulpit for their devilry and especially as the expansion taking place between “Hungry Graves” and “Beneath Evil Eyes” realizes as the latter reaches for some of the more striking riffcraft on the album. A little over halfway through the piece, around ~3:18 minutes in, a strong melodic turn helps separate their sound from the otherwise similar point of inspiration carried by say, Vampire‘s 2014 album as this is something more slick, less intent on outright worshipping the raw extreme thrash side of things. This sublime step between the sinister leads and heavy rocking NWOBHM gloom acts as major punctuation for the middle reach of the full listen, at least for my own taste, and there it becomes most clear that we are not getting a raw demo-level throwback to evil 80’s black/death metal here on any such plain terms. We could still accuse them of reaching for the era and extremity of bands like Slaughter Lord and Celtic Frost to some degree but not as a matter of simple worship and this’ll sort itself out as the overall lingering in-transition feeling hangs over their work as we push on through the second side.

‘Wildly Possessed‘ is not a long record at ~34 minutes but it is a densely jammed event which holds up well to scrutiny when it comes to the details. That said it is also not an outright tuneful record nor is it the sort to get lost in technical showmanship. Reversed are however all about the riff and at their most effective when whipping through energetic evil-thrashers like “Final Death” which are less about cracking off a thousand riffs per song and more how the ride from start to finish might generate some manner of memorable statement, performative bash or just a surprising ride through a few tunneled-out turns. The best song to showcase this is probably “Hungry Graves” but closer “Black Seed” is more to my taste as it has that ‘Death After Death‘ feeling I’m always looking for as they strike into the first couple of riffs. The more compelling note to pull from this extended closer is that they’ve not resigned to shoving a weak song at the end, in fact the quality of their craft doesn’t wane as these seven songs carry out their sordid rituals with complete un-fucked with focus. That closing piece was the thing that broke the coffin lid, the song to call me back into their circle and partake again, and I’d greatly appreciated how well it’d cycled right back to the title track/opening salvo (“Wildly Possessed”) which carries a similarly thrashing loose circa ’87 sensation.

The full listen here is bumpy but in a good way, plenty of battles fought between simple death metal anthems and venomous strikes at groove and bombast, but I guess more importantly it isn’t a linear step through their portal. Each song feels like a well developed, substantial chunk of effort and none are slashed at the throat and dumped quick without finishing the thought. Even if we don’t get pure black electricity from every moment all of Reversed‘s approach on this debut manages to retain the tuneful aspects of 80’s death metal with a bit of patience applied to the details, their own touch which reads as a strong personality up front. ‘Wildly Possessed‘ gives a bold enough impression that these folks “get” the thrust of the early stuff but also have more ideas on what they can do with that push, avoiding the double bass rolling twenty riffs a song saladry of the late 80’s into early 90’s stuff. Instead their modus seems to be picking out rhythms, matching them to vocal arrangements/patternation in a way that you’ll recall and maybe return for again. That is more-or-less the knack of 80’s extreme metal at its point of advent as far as I see it, pushing the envelope but not losing the plot. It took a couple of listens before their personae and all of the details had soaked in mind but I’d ultimately walked away from this impressive debut appreciating their hard-swinging garage borne drive and the more sophisticated brains feeding into their brand of evil heavy metal. A high recommendation.

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