POSSESSED Hopes To Begin Recording New Album In September 2026: 'I'm Fine-Tuning The Songs', Says JEFF BECERRA

POSSESSED frontman Jeff Becerra has taken to social media to offer an update on the progress of the songwriting and recording sessions for the band's follow-up to 2019's "Revelations Of Oblivion" album. In a video message shared on Friday (July 31),he said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "Hey, this is Jeff. I'm just saying what's up. I haven't been around. I haven't really checked in since we got back from Europe. I'm just kind of keeping you up on things, give you a little update, what's going on with POSSESSED. I'm fine-tuning the songs in preparation to go into the studio. Hopefully we'll record the new album, if everything goes right, in September. So basically, I'm just making some alterations, something to make the vocals hit a little harder and be heavy. I hope you like the album. I hope everything goes well, and we'll be able to record in September and then get the mechanisms and the machine rolling so that we can get you that new stuff out ASAP. Hold tight. Thank you for your patience. Stay blessed, stay possessed."

This past March, Becerra stated about his songwriting process for the upcoming LP: "It's my process this time to kind of listen back, see what it sounds like, and then make changes from there. And it's pretty fun. It's been a really, really good experience. Meanwhile, remotely, Bobby/Robert's [Cardenas] doing his bass tracks over the same recordings with the hidden click track. Of course, [guitarists] Daniel [Gonzalez] and Claudeous [Creamer] are doing their tracks, and Chris [Aguirre] is putting the real drums over the electronic drums so that we'll have a viable scratch track when we go into the big studio."

He continued: "After all their parts are done, Daniel will come over here. We'll go down into my basement down here, and record the vocal tracks. Then we'll head to the big studios. Traditionally, drums have a, a larger studio for a bigger drum sound. And then me and the guys will go into the other studio for the guitar, bass and vocals, and we'll go from there. I'm really looking forward to it."

Jeff added: "Thank you for your patience. I know it's been seven years, almost seven years, but I'd rather put out something really viable and really good. I don't wanna put out any shit for you guys. I wanna put out the best, and hopefully it's worth the weight. Like I said, it's really different, but really POSSESSED and really fucking heavy. And I'm just having a ball with it."

In an October 2025 interview with Australia's Devil's Horns Zine, Becerra stated about POSSESSED's next LP:  "I'm working on the last three sets of lyrics, and then the album is finished. And it's a trip. It's a whole different animal. I don't know if people will love it or hate it. I hope they love it. It's different. It's definitely different."

A year earlier, Becerra told Alex Stojanovic of MetalMasterKingdom.com that POSSESSED's new material was turning out "very cool, very heavy. But a lot more tempo switching. And it's cool.

"POSSESSED will never sell out," he continued. "I'd rather die. But it's still very, very heavy. It's probably gonna be one of our darkest albums. And also something that you don't have to grit your teeth to get through the whole thing."

Jeff also talked about the POSSESSED songwriting process, saying: "We all write. I think I wrote 63 or 64 percent of the last album, so 50 percent and that extra music. 50 percent would be lyrics, if we're doing it at 100. Even though it's not really broken down that way, it's easier to explain that way. So I'll write riffs, definitely, I'll send them to Dan [Daniel Gonzalez]. Me and Dan are kind of the main guys, but more and more, on this one you're seeing Claudeous and Robert coming out and showing off the riffs.

"This [version of] POSSESSED has been around more than three times as long as the first one, so, yeah, we work well together," he explained. "And they're not afraid to say, 'Hey, no, this is not good' to me and vice versa. But we're looking for what's good or what is mendable or what is perfect as is. And so I think we're all super picky about what we do."

In June 2024, Becerra was asked by El Planeta Del Rock how he looked back on "Revelations Of Oblivion" five years after the LP's release. Jeff said: "I really liked it. It's weird. When you make new music, you're like, 'Oh, this song's gonna go over like gangbusters,' but then it's always the songs that you didn't expect [that] statistically do better. So I've lost track of trying to pay attention or trying to guide the machine. I'm just playing what I want, and I think with 'Revelations', I had to kind of stay in my own lane, which was great. It was straight-forward."

POSSESSED originally split in 1987, leaving behind a short but highly influential legacy, most notably 1985's "Seven Churches" album. Internal tensions after the release of 1987's "The Eyes Of Horror" EP led to the band's dissolution, with guitarist Larry Lalonde joining Bay Area tech-thrashers BLIND ILLUSION, then PRIMUS, while Becerra, guitarist Mike Torrao and drummer Mike Sus each going separate directions.

Two years after POSSESSED's split, Becerra was the victim of a failed armed robbery attempt, leaving him partially paralyzed and wheelchair-bound and sending him into a spiral of drug and alcohol abuse. POSSESSED was reactivated by Torrao in 1990 with a completely different lineup, but only released two demos before dissolving in 1993. Becerra then reformed POSSESSED in 2007 with his own lineup, which released its first studio album in 33 years, "Revelations Of Oblivion", in 2019.