Sacrilege ~ England

Turn Back Trilobite (1989)

Sacrilege were such an unusual band. I bought this album upon release, as it promised a progressive doom metal, similar to Candlemass. We'll get to its contents soon enough.

A few years later (1993) I stumbled on an album in a record store called Behind the Realms of Madness by a band called Sacrilege. It was on an American label, and after hearing it, I just presumed it was a different group with a similar moniker (which was very common back then - still is really). About a decade ago (2015) I revisited that title, and it just wasn't for me. One of the very few metal albums I let go from the collection in recent times. Received a lot of money for it too, about what you would pay today for a nice copy. So what was their sound like? RYM appends the genre as Stenchcore, an extension of Crust Punk. Neither of which I'm familiar with, but one can guess that's not the music Genius Hans gravitates towards. Noisy, messy, with little to hold onto. It's a highly rated album fwiw, which says that for the genre, it's a good one.

It was only then I was informed we were talking the same group as the LP I'm revisiting now. The Behind the Realms group weren't American, but English. Turn Back Trilobite couldn't be more different than its debut. I never heard the middle album by the group, and I understand it's a thrash album (want to hear it for sure). As noted in the first paragraph, Sacrilege had pivoted to a slower, doomier style. With female vocals. And she sings, not growls. On the first listen, and on this visit, I never was blown away by the album. It doesn't have the Candlemass crunch, and the compositions don't challenge the synapses all that much. 'Born Again' Black Sabbath is another benchmark. Some of the guitar solos veer towards space rock, which is a plus. It also seems a bit lifeless. I think the production is mostly the problem. It has this hollow sound, like in a tunnel. Lynda Simpson's vocals also come with a tape hiss in places. When blocking those elements out, the music holds up well. These guys needed to go one more album, with a different producer / engineer, and I think they would have had much more impact on the worldwide stage. According to RYM and Metal Archives, it's definitely their lowest rated album. So it hasn't aged that well either.

I've had this LP forever, so I think I'll hold onto it for nostalgia reasons. Surprisingly it doesn't sell for comparatively too much (~$30), and it appears that sealed cut-outs are still available some 36 years later.

Ownership: 1989 Metal Blade (LP)

1989 (acquired); 1/16/15; 10/13/25 (review)

10/13/25 (new entry)