Possessed "seven churches"

I was drawn to this album cover like a moth to a flame. For as long as I can remember I've been attracted to the "evil" aesthetic. In comic books I always preferred the villain's costumes, the monsters in movies were what I waited to see and when I discovered heavy metal I had found a sub-culture as obsessed with this stuff as I was. 1985 was an exciting time to be a metal head, the burgeoning thrash metal scene was starting to release great albums (though we didn't know what was just around the corner: 1986 is the greatest year in heavy metal history).  Someone's mom had given us a ride to Cavages Records in the mall, it was our mecca at the time because it had a dedicated "heavy metal" section. They carried releases you wouldn't find at department stores, they carried albums like #possessed "seven churches". Now I've mentioned the album cover but I want you to realize that while it's iconic it is also terrible: just some conflicting fonts on a black background (admittingly the band's logo: pointy calligraphy aflame is cool but I have no idea what they were thinking with the samurai font for the album title).  What makes this album cover so hide-it-from-your-mom awesome is that big light grey inverted cross. Aww yeah, that's the spot.
The record is proto thrash and as far as I know coined the term "death metal" with one of their song titles. It's fast, sloppy and evil sounding. Unintelligible lyrics with swirling heavy guitars and a drummer that sounds like he's struggling to keep up but it all coalesced into an awesome album. The band, though we didn't know it at the time, we're all teenagers. They spoke to us as only co-generational hesher could. Also of note: Larry Lalonde was in this band. He's the guitarist in Primus that no one ever paid attention to.
A couple years ago I got to catch the band live, though the only remaining member from this album was bassist/vocalist Jeff Becerra. Jeff was confined to a wheelchair, I'm not sure the cause, but the guy sounded great and he thrashed around on stage in that chair with gleeful abandon. It was awesome and I finally got into a pit for the song "holy hell" so that's a bucket list tick off.