Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Sacrament - "Haunts of Violence"



Sacrament - Haunts of Violence
1992/2014, Retroactive

1. Haunts of Violence
2. Carry the Corpse
3. Destructive Heresies
4. The Wicked Will Rot
5. Supplication of the Destitute
6. Souls in Torment
7. Separate From Iniquity
8. Seared Consciences
9. Under Threat of Death
10. Portraits of Decay

Haunts represents a noticeable shift in the band's sound. Instead of death metal/thrash the band plays it far more technical this time around. Also Rob Wolfe replaces Mike Torone on vox. Rob's style is in a higher register with a tenor shrill that fits the music very well. If Testimony is a spiked cudgel then Haunts is scalpel - precision is the name of the game here. Whereas the debut smashed through your speakers like the Hulk, Haunts keeps its wits about it and carefully dazzles you with well placed riffs and technical mastery. I like Haunts though sometimes the songs can sound the same, especially if you're not paying attention. Though I must say I did learn a lot of Scripture with this disc as each song could be used as its own Bible study. I think "Under Threat of Death" is my favorite on here.

I've been able to update my hard copy to the new Retroactive reissue released in 2014. While the remaster is spectacular, the actual packaging leaves a little bit to be desired. It's a simple four panel digi-pack with no lyrics or much in the way of liner notes. Additionally, they've still got Mike Torone listed as the vocalist when it should be Rob Wolfe. I don't know how much it costs to make a CD but a label like Metal Mind was able to do some pretty high quality stuff with digi-packs, so I don't know.

Useless Fact: This was Sacrament's last disc. They sort of dropped off the face of the earth though a few members from this band and Believer went on to form a goth-type band called Fountain of Tears.

3 comments:

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  2. Well... I tried to delete the asian crap... but I can't find the trash can now. ARGH!

    Not that asian stuff is crap.... but foreign language links on an blog with NO asian language on it is pretty annoying.

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  3. Everytime I've gotten such a "comment", it's contained a link to some Asian porn site(s). So now I just report them to Google's "Report a Spam Blog", at:

    http://www.google.com/support/blogger/bin/request.py?hl=en&contact_type=spam

    You just put in the blog URL, which can be tracked down through the comment's author's link (all that I have received have been from spam blogspot addresses). Supposedly, Google's trying to weed out the spammers -- so reporting the dastardly ne'er-do-wells may help in the efforts.

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