When we release our Top 40 Albums of the Year issue every January, the Hall of Fame tends to get lost in the “holy shit, that band made it?!” shuffle. In the last couple years, the Top 40 issue has yielded some of our more (comparatively) outside-the-box honorees: Spazz’s La Revancha just last year and Integrity’s Systems Overload in 2014 (although there’s been plenty of no-duh classics inducted alongside the Top 40, too: Cryptopsy’s None So Vile and Sarcófago’s I.N.R.I.). We’ll leave it up to you (presumably mostly American readers) to determine the Q rating of this issue’s HOF: Sacrifice’s Forward to Termination.
It’s not that ’80s Canadian thrash has a bad name historically—around these parts, it generally has, well, no name. This Toronto-based quartet’s second album hit commercial paydirt up north, with single “Re-Animation” soundtracking MuchMusic’s Power Hour, the Canadian equivalent of Headbangers Ball. Yet, Sacrifice remain a second-, third- or even fourth-tier concern stateside, unsurprising considering the dominating global breadth of the Big 4. According to our own Kevin Stewart-Panko, though, the band made the rounds and some renowned allies along the way, “[working] the postal system and ‘send back my stamps’ routine to their advantage, making friends and fans across these United States and abroad, with folks like Keith Huckins [Deadguy, Kiss It Goodbye, Rorschach], Swedish metal patriarch Tompa Lindberg and Sigh’s Mirai Kawashima all growing up with fond memories of the band.”
If you haven’t heard Forward to Termination (or even Sacrifice’s raging debut, Torment in Fire), there are severe gaps in your thrash education. Check out the January issue for one ripping history lesson. Need sonic proof? We’ve already honored Sacrifice in the Flexi Series, via Drugs of Faith’s killer cover of “Re-Animation” a couple years ago.
Check out the original…
..and compare it to Drugs of Faith’s version (featuring guest vox from Jason Netherton of Misery Index, stars of our latest flexi, Sepultura cover “Primitive Future”).
