Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Sacrilege - Behind The Realms Of Madness

Collapse
X
Collapse
  •  
    Ian Jane
    Administrator

  • Sacrilege - Behind The Realms Of Madness



    Sacrilege - Behind The Realms Of Madness
    Released by: Relapse Records
    Released on: November 13th, 2015.
    Purchase From Amazon

    Relapse Records has been reissuing some pretty interesting stuff these last few years and now, as that trend continues, they're offering up their first pull from the back catalogue of the UK's Sacrilege, a re-mastered release of their 1985 album Behind The Realms Of Madness (originally released by Children Of The Revolution Records in the UK). The band was made of up Lynda "Tam" Simpson on vocals and Damian Thompson on guitars for the duration. The tracks on this collection also find Tony May on bass for everything except Sight Of The Wise and Feed (where Frank Healy plays) and Andy Baker on drums for all tracks except those two same exceptions (where Spike T. Smith gets behind the kit).

    While Relapse is regarded as a metal label first and foremost, Sacrilege sort of transcend that label as they incorporate elements of hardcore, thrash, crust punk and what not. They were also very political, taking on topical issues of the day like the nuclear arms race and mixing them up with more traditional fantasy metal elements (we do have a song about Mordor here, for example).

    The material included here has been re-mastered by Brad Boatright (Sleep, Hooded Menace, Obituary). The original release of Behind The Realms Of Madness was only a six track affair. This reissue includes seven previously unreleased bonus tracks, which should make it pretty appealing to fans.

    Weird synth sounds start Lifeline off with a strange, droney start that's quickly buried under thrash guitar riffage and some nasty sounding drumming and we're off. Simpson belts it out, rallying against materialism and futility of it all. This is fast, with an obvious snot balled punk attitude to it that fits the thrash-core style of playing really well.



    Shadow From Mordor has a doomier, sludgier, more 'metal' sound to it - as you'd probably expect from a track inspired by The Lord Of The Rings books. Thompson's guitar noodles a bit here, soloing to start with, and then things hit a stride and the band starts to gallop. The vocals don't fuck around though, this isn't fancy, this is raw and pretty pissed off. At Death's Door is more of a straight up thrash track, the kind that obviously inspired bands like Municipal Waste and Toxic Holocaust, but it's dark, raging against world hunger and the plight of the have not's. The playing here is a bit rudimentary, it's rhythmic but very repetitive, but you can't fault it for authentically pissed off attitude.

    A Violation Of Something Sacred is one of the stand out tracks on a pretty solid collection of hard and heavy nastiness. This one is a bit faster, a bit nastier and a bit meaner sounding with a long instrumental stretch to it where the guitar playing gets insanely fast. The ominous ringing of a bell opens up The Closing Irony before the band kicks in. A song about the end of the world and the asshole-ish-ness of mankind, it's not a particularly cheery track but it's intense. The original album closes out with Out Of Sight, Out Of Mind - the fastest of the original six songs on Behind The Realms Of Madness, and it's exactly what you'd want out of a classic Sacrilege track: speed, anger, gritty tone and an evil sound.





    Moving on to the bonus tracks, we start off with The Captive, a track that goes into some pretty dark places lyrically and musically almost to the point where it sounds like it could be a black metal song. Flight Of The Nazgul once again sees the band returning to Middle Earth and offering up a track based on Tolkien's writing. It's doomy to start off with but once the drums start to kick in, the tempo picks up and while the vocals only kick in briefly, when they do it's pretty great. Sight Of The Wise begins with a lengthy instrumental section, no vocals at all until well past the half way mark, but once they kick in, yeah, this is it. These guys don't segue from their sound all that much, but the consistency in this early material is pretty fantastic.

    That brings us to Feed, a new track recorded by the band (for the first time in almost three decades… they haven't recorded together since 1988) exclusive for this release. Not surprisingly, there's a BIG difference in sound quality between this track from 2015 and the tracks recorded on low budget analogue gear thirty years ago, but the band's sound is still very much in the same vein. This track is slower, a bit doomier, but age doesn't seem to have tamed them in the least. Even if the production values are way, way better here you can still definitely hear that tone, that nasty edge, that makes the early Sacrilege stuff as intense and as beautifully ugly as it is working its way through this new addition to their discography.

    The album finishes up with Dig Your Own Grave, a blunt, fierce and ridiculously aggressive track that runs less than two minutes in length and that plays to the band's roots in crust punk more than as it does their metal elements. From there? Live versions of The Closing Irony and Bloodrun (did this track appear anywhere other than the Fear The Reaper demos?), both with surprisingly good sound quality for old live recordings.

    If you're new to Sacrilege or a seasoned fan, this is a great way to get into their stuff - you get the original six tracks off of Behind The Realms Of Madness as well as the seven bonus tracks (one of which is a new recording) - great stuff.

    Check out the new video for Feed below!


      Posting comments is disabled.

    Latest Articles

    Collapse

    Working...
    X