Seven Churches (album) - Legacy and Impact

Legacy and Impact

While Florida's Death had released more albums and is also cited as an enduring death metal progenitor, Seven Churches pre-dated the latter band's 1987 debut, Scream Bloody Gore by two years. In regards to Seven Churches, Italian music journalist Piero Scaruffi noted that although "the cradle of the (death metal) genre was truly Florida", it was Possessed who "coined" the death metal term. Specifically, the book Choosing Death: The Improbable History of Death Metal and Grindcore credited bassist/vocalist Jeff Becerra as initially creating the term in 1983.

Seven Churches has been interchangeably described as "connecting the dots between thrash metal and death metal", being "monumental" in developing the death metal style, and as being the "first death metal album", the latter attributed to interviews with (or literature by) musicians including Kam Lee (ex-Mantas/Death, ex-Massacre), the late Ronnie James Dio (ex-Dio, ex-Black Sabbath) and Steven Wilson (Porcupine Tree, Opeth). Former Napalm Death drummer Mick Harris said his introduction to metal was Possessed's Seven Churches album, a personal recommendation to him by then-guitarist Justin Broadrick.

In its July 1986 review of Seven Churches, SPIN described the album as belonging to the "sub-mutated genre of death-metal" and being a "full-on Japanese-commuter-train-without-brakes of what this genre should sound like...bassist/vocalist Jeff Becerra regurgitates what have to be the most Stygian vocal utterances to date."

U.K. extreme metal record label Earache Records stated that "....the likes of Trey Azagthoth and Morbid Angel based what they were doing in their formative years on the Possessed blueprint laid down on the legendary Seven Churches recording. Possessed arguably did more to further the cause of 'Death Metal' than any of the early acts on the scene back in the mid-late 80's."