Canadian thrash metal veterans Sacrifice return in 2025 with their first new studio album in more than sixteen years. “Volume Six”, the band’s sixth album overall and second since reforming in 2006, features ten new originals and a cover paying homage to the Toronto scene from which they originally emerged.
Working once again with engineer Darius Szczepaniak – who was also at the helm for Sacrifice’s 2009 effort “The Ones I Condemn” – “Volume Six” was recorded, mixed, and mastered at Phase One Studios in Scarborough, Ontario. Tracked over a period of sessions between September 2023 and May 2024, the eleven-song offering was produced by vocalist & guitarist Rob Urbinati and features the band’s original lineup, with lead guitarist Joe Rico, bassist Scott Watts, and drummer Gus Pynn, as well as Urbinati. They are one of, if not the only, 1980s thrash band that still has its original lineup intact and playing together, and on “Volume Six”, the band hits it out of the park.
“I write all the time”, says Urbinati about the latest album’s origins. “It was around 2017 when I wrote a couple songs that I thought were really good. I played them for the band, and they were totally happy with them and the direction. I wrote a couple more and Gus and I were making some real progress in getting the songs tight and even talking about recording, then the pandemic hit. My creativity completely dried up for whatever reason, even though I was sitting at home with nothing to do. There was nowhere to rehearse in the city because things would shut down, then open up, then close down again, so it was hard to get a consistent rehearsal schedule going and I just wasn’t feeling it. When things started coming back, our original plan was to do an EP, but we had enough songs that we were completely comfortable and happy with to do a whole album”.
The songs on “Volume Six” run the gamut from speedy, breakneck thrash (“Comatose”, “Explode”, “We Will Not Survive”) to more nuanced, layered, metallic compositions (“Underneath Millenia”, “Your Hunger for War”). Two instrumental tracks on the album show yet another side of the band’s songwriting while still clearly being Sacrifice songs: “Lunar Eclipse” is a showcase for Rico and Urbinati’s excellent twin guitar leads, while “Black Hashish” is Sacrifice at their most psychedelic. The album’s final track, “Trapped in a World”, is a cover of ‘80s Toronto hardcore band Direct Action, a group that had a massive influence on the members of Sacrifice during their formative years. The song features guest vocals by Youth Youth Youth vocalist and Toronto music legend Brian Taylor, who operated the Diabolic Force label in the eighties and produced the band’s first three albums, bringing everything full-circle three decades later with his appearance here.
“Sacrifice generally has pretty dark themes and a lot of lyrics were written over the pandemic when things were feeling pretty apocalyptic, especially at the beginning of it”, explains Urbinati. “‘Comatose’ comes from us playing in Vancouver a lot and seeing the amount of drug abuse around downtown East Vancouver. It affects you when you’re seeing human beings everywhere with extreme drug problems and paramedics walking around at night in groups of three basically looking for people who have overdosed or died. There’s that, world politics, all the wars going on, natural disasters – half of Canada was on fire last year! – the album is pretty dark, and I think the art conveys the content”.
The stunning front cover artwork for “Volume Six” was painted by Propagandhi bassist and lifelong Sacrifice fan Todd Kowalski. There is a mutual admiration between both bands: Propagandhi’s song “The Bangers Embrace”, off their 2009 album “Supporting Caste”, is a love letter to Sacrifice about seeing them play live back in 1990. The bands have shared stages over the years and released a split single of covers – Sacrifice transforms Rush’s “Anthem” into a thrash classic while Propagandhi does a Corrosion Of Conformity song – via the War On Music label in 2010. When Urbinati asked Kowalski about painting the cover he gave him the lyrics and the music and asked him to interpret it visually as he envisioned it.
Check out the lyric video for the ripping lead single “Antidote of Poison” below.
“Volume Six” will be released on February 21st, 2025, through all digital platforms and on CD, MC, and LP in Blue, White, and Black variants. Find North American preorders at the Cursed Blessings Records webshop here. The record is available via High Roller Records in Europe, Asia, and Australia here.
Tracklist:
1. Comatose
2. Antidote of Poison
3. Missile
4. Underneath Millennia
5. Your Hunger for War
6. Incoming Mass Extinction
7. Lunar Eclipse
8. Explode
9. Black Hashish
10. We Will Not Survive
11. Trapped in a World (feat. Brian Tailor)
12. Trapped in a World (feat. Rob Urbinati)*
* (North America CD/MC bonus track)
Sacrifice originally formed in 1983 in Scarborough, Ontario, a suburb in the east end of Toronto. Taking influence from both the underground metal and punk scenes of the day, the then-teenagers released their debut album “Torment in Fire” in 1986 and established themselves as a band to watch. It was followed up by 1987’s “Forward to Termination”, featuring the video single “Re-animation”, which ended up in regular rotation on Canada’s Much Music video station the following year and even became the theme song for the channel’s long running metal music video show, the Pepsi Power Hour. Original Sepultura frontman Max Cavelera recently revealed “Forward to Termination” to be one of his three favorite thrash metal albums of all time. Their third effort, 1990’s “Soldiers of Misfortune”, has been praised as one of the most important Canadian albums ever, making now Toronto’s 50 Best Toronto Albums Ever list.
Sacrifice played a prominent role in the 1980s underground metal scene in Toronto, and along with Voivod, Razor, and Annihilator, is considered one of the “Big 4” of Canadian thrash metal. The band released four studio albums on Diabolic Force in Canada, Metal Blade Records in the US, and Roadrunner Records in Europe before parting ways in 1993. After coming back together to play a reunion concert in 2006, the quartet released their fifth studio album, “The Ones I Condemn”, in 2009. Since reforming, Sacrifice has played major international festivals, including Belgium’s Alcatraz Festival, Germany’s Keep it True, Peru’s Ai-apaec, Maryland Deathfest and California Deathfest in the United States, and both the 2012 and 2018 editions of Japan’s True Thrash Festival, amongst others.
Weblinks:
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www.instagram.com/sacrificecanada
