With the return of Dave McClain (who initially sat behind the kit between 1991-1997) to the fold, and the addition of twenty-two-year-old Joey Radziwill to the line-up, Sacred Reich’s fire is, once more, burning bright. Tracking at Platinum Underground Studio with Arthur Rizk (Power trip, Cavalera conspiracy), with awakening the band have managed to bottle their onstage lightening with clarity and power and the result is an eight-track thrash monster that combines old school metal sensibilities with hyper-modern riffing to grand effect.
Kicking off with the sort of chunky riff that would have had Beavis screaming “yes YES!” (shortly before being beaten upside the head by Butthead), awakening is one hell of an album opener, sitting somewhere between the ferocious groove of Testament, the epic scope of King Diamond and the blistering heat of Megadeth. It’s no one-off, either, as the band storm into divide and conquer, a track that pitches the intense riffing of thrash against the epic melodies of iron maiden. Cramming a surfeit of ideas into a mere three minutes and forty seconds, the band’s restless creativity is nothing short of inspirational and, before you know it, the band have torn into the rolling thunder of salvation, a track that does much to explain why the band were so keen to welcome the human octopus that is Dave McClain back into their ranks. Phil Rind also shines, delivering a vocal performance filed to the brim with confidence and power, pitching just right between soaring melodies and lung-bursting volume on a chorus that is destined to enflame an already steaming mosh pit. Hitting the half-way mark, manifest reality is a straight-up monster; a grinning, maniacal, “here’s Johnny!”-type of track that will see a good proportion of the band’s fans in neck-braces as riff after riff pour forth from the speakers in a metallic torrent.
Opening up the album’s second half with a tattoo, killing machine offers up thee short minutes of militant rage, Phil’s lyrics capturing the futility of state-based warfare as the music rages around him with surprising melodic depth. The band hit on a potent groove with the lengthy Death Valley the guitars surging around Dave’s chrome-plated beat, but even ere the band have some surprises, the Southern tinge of the chorus giving way to Queensryche-esque prog metal, the band clearly revelling in the excitement of the moment. Even that, however, pales in comparison to the ferocious revolution, which, at under three-minutes in length, simply flies out of the speakers. Having successfully bludgeoned the listener into giddy submission, the band bring the album to a suitably explosive close with something to believe, a track that recalls the might of Judas Priest with its stabbing riff giving way to the sort of chorus that walks the incredibly fine line between clichéd and inspired and pulls it off beautifully.
With every single track, awakening sounds like a band paying tribute to both their faithful fans and to the whole genre of metal. From the incisive riffs of awakening and manifest reality to the epi classicism of something to believe via the killer groove of Death Valley, Sacred Reich cover all the bases whilst somehow maintaining the perfect ebb and flow of the album as a whole. With only eight tracks on offer, few of which top four minutes, there’s not an ounce of fat to be found anywhere, the performances are uniformly excellent and the album as a whole is flawlessly executed. One of the best metal albums of the year? Most certainly. 9.5
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