Possessed 13

Johan Lindstrand rejoined The Crown in October 2002, already rehearsing new songs. In February 2003 the band booked Studio Fredman in Gothenburg to record and mix the album, and by mid-March pre-production had produced a demo of the whole record, expected to hold thirteen tracks, two of them instrumental, with fewer melodies and more power, as the band put it. The title, Possessed 13, was announced on 18 March 2003. The album was recorded at Studio Fredman in May and June 2003 and produced by the band themselves. Patrik J. Sten engineered and mixed it, and it was mastered at Studio Bohus by Dragan Tanaskovic with the band. Lindstrand sang, Marcus Sunesson played lead guitar and Marko Tervonen rhythm guitar, with Magnus Olsfelt on bass and Janne Saarenpää on drums; Olsfelt wrote most of the lyrics. From this album on, Tervonen has said, the band tuned down to C, after standard E on their first four albums and a gradual move to D. The running order is printed in three headed parts, "Initiation", "Exaltation" and "Annihilation"; the fifth track, "Dream Bloody Hell", and the closing "In Memoriam" are instrumentals. Locust Constructions did the artwork. Metal Blade released the album in Europe on 20 October 2003, also as a limited two-CD "Deluxe Edition" digipak whose thirteen-track bonus disc gathers the band's first studio recording, "Last Rite" (1992), the complete Forever Heaven Gone (1993) and Forget the Light (1994) demos, a cover of Bathory's "Burnin' Leather" and a demo of "Rebel Angel"; Europe also had a double LP. In Sweden it spent a week at No. 54 in the official album chart and at No. 10 in the hard rock chart, and a European tour was booked from Finland in November. On 7 March 2004 the band announced they were calling it a day, naming badly organised tours as the main reason; they had chosen not to sign a new deal with Metal Blade and regretted that the album would miss the touring it deserved. It remained their last album of new songs before the split.