Sacred Reich – Ignorance – 1987

I recently had a discussion with Micke from TPL Records. We meet once a year and he’s always great to talk metal with. I would like to say that he knows everything about metal music. That’s not entirely true of course. No one knows everything, but it’s safe to say that he knows more about it than me. But then again, he has been dealing with Metal for 40 years, selling albums and keeping track of every band I know and hundreds that I never heard of.

Sacred Reich is not news to me though. I can’t really remember how we got into the discussion in the first place but I think it was me wondering if they were up to something new and that The American Way must be the best album of the 90s. That spawned the idea of going through and listening to every album they made, starting with their debut album Ignorance. Let’s see if my willpower brings me all the way to the end of this small project because I tend to lose interest after a while.

I still claim that The American Way is the best album of the 90s, or very close to it t least. But I couldn’t really remember the other albums – at all. So, what does Ignorance sound like? Well, you can clearly hear what band it is. It sounds like Sacred Reich. Partly because of Phil Rind’s voice of course, but also because there’s that special crunch to the music. There are some nice tempo- and/or time signature changes from time to time which sounds just right. But, you can also hear that the band is inexperienced and the production values aren’t the best. It doesn’t sound bad at all, but there are some things that would have made the production sound better quality-wise.

I think it’s a great first effort. But not the best debut album out there. You know I’m a sucker for freshman albums! Ignorance doesn’t have those catchy riffs and melodies that The American Way has but it’s not really fair to compare a band’s debut with their masterpiece! This is a good effort for sure! I like it!