[10] While the quartet had begun writing some music together, the line-up would be cut short when Fisk committed suicide by gunshot in front of his girlfriend's house in Tara Hills, California, and Andrews subsequently opted not to participate in the group any longer.

That band included Larry LaLonde and Danny Boland on guitars and Michael Miner on drums, all of whom were high school students in the same graduating class.

[11][12] Possessed spent 1983 and 1984 practicing and working on their sound by performing at local venues and becoming an active part of the Bay Area thrash scene.

[13][14] Slagel showed interest in the band and offered to put their song "Swing of the Axe" on the upcoming compilation Metal Massacre VI.

In November of the same year, the band flew to Montreal, Quebec, Canada for the WWIII Weekend Festival in support of the Seven Churches release, playing alongside Celtic Frost, Destruction, Voivod and Nasty Savage.

[19][20][21] Despite this, he continued to play a role in the death, black, and thrash metal scenes, and received a degree in labor studies and plans to attend law school.

After a U.S. tour with Danzig and Marduk, Rick and Bay Cortez along with Ernesto Bueno returned to Sadistic Intent, while drummer Emilio Marquez remained.

[24] By this time, the band consisted of Becerra and Marquez along with guitarists Daniel Gonzalez and Claudeous Creamer and bassist Robert Cardenas.

[27] In a February 2021 interview, Becerra stated that he would begin writing new material for the next Possessed album after the conclusion of the Revelations of Oblivion tour.

Possessed are often cited as the first death metal band, largely because of the early use of grunted vocals, ultra-fast drumming and guitar tremolo picking as previously noted.

Even while the band had played only a handful of gigs in the Bay Area, they earned a huge capital of popularity in Europe's metal scene.

'[46]Author Daniel Ekeroth expanded on Lee's assessment of the 1984 Death Metal demo in his book, Swedish Death Metal: Unlike virtually all other contemporary bands, Possessed left the Venom/Motörhead touches behind, creating "symphonic" tunes, and combining loads of complex riffs and drum patterns with the rawest sounds and fastest paces imaginable...Becerra took his vocal style one step beyond anything the world had heard before, as he seemed to scream and grunt at the same time.

A grandmother in her mid-fifties at that time,[48][49] Abono had no previous connection to heavy metal music other than as a concert designated driver for her daughters, one of whom was a girlfriend of guitarist Larry LaLonde.

[49] Due to generation gap, Abono also had limited awareness of the sometimes blasphemous themes of heavy metal, and was allegedly offended upon reading the lyric sheet of Seven Churches.

[53] In 1993, former drummer Mike Sus retired from music to pursue other careers, going on to get a degree in psychology and is helping injured people to live a normal everyday life.