Wolfram, D. – Destruction: Trapped In Lunatic Possession (Book review) : Metal-Rules.com

January 4, 2026

35 2 minutes read

book scaled 1.jpeg

Reviewed: December, 2025
Published: 2022, Darkness Shall Rise
Rating: 4/5
Reviewer: JP

The nostalgia market for the early days of Death, Thrash and Black Metal is still very strong. The number of newer, specialty, reissue labels is growing at a healthy pace. Labels like Cult Never Dies, Floga and Darkness Shall Rise all produce high -quality reissue campaigns with lots of cool merchandise such as T-shirts cassette libraries, box sets and more.

I’ve noticed a few times that Darkness Shall Rise (DSR) has included specialized, band-specific, books as part of some of their more elaborate boxsets. Fortunately, for fans like me the label realized that some customers may not want to buy the entire boxset but are interested in the book. Accordingly, some of these books are produced in a few extra copies and made available for stand-alone purchase. Bands with DSR books include Venom, Dissection, Desaster, Mysticum …and the subject of our review, Destruction. Please feel free to read all the reviews in this mini-series.

Some casual Destruction fans might question the value of this book when back in 2004 the band released the TWENTY YEARS OF DESTRUCTION documentary on DVD and then in 2010 the band released the DVD, SAVAGE SYMPHONY: THE HISTORY OF ANNIHILATION which had another whole documentary about the band.

Fortunately, this book is much more focused on the years of 1984-1990 as it says on the cover. It goes into more detail of that era so if you own both documentaries and are worried about the content of the book being redundant, you need not worry. TRAPPED IN LUNATIC POSSESSION covers a lot of early material.

Like all the five titles in the DSR series to date, the 185-page hardcover is embossed with an eye-catching silver-on-black motif. It’s printed on nice glossy paper with a good easy to read layout and design.

The boxset came with nine (!) cassettes and in the book, each tale gets a full chapters with lyrics, liner notes, credits and photos from that album cycle. It looks really great with tons of new photos and lots of flyers and old articles to look at.

New, long, interviews with each member anchor the book as each gets ample time and attention to speak about the past.

Darkness Shall Rise has done an excellent job in the creation of this book. TRAPPED IN LUNATIC POSSESSION is a comprehensive and interesting examination of the black roots of one of the most important thrash bands of all time.