Whether you call it death metal, speed metal, thrash or just plain heavy metal, Living Sacrifice is certainly a rowdy excursion into the world of aggressive music.
While thrash might be the best categorization of Living Sacrifice's music, it is probably a good idea to delineate some of the boundaries, blurred though they are, between the genres of aggressive music: death metal--growling, slow, dark vocals; speed metal--fast vocals with straight guitar and fast, inaudible lyrics; thrash--a hybrid or mixture of speed metal and death metal; heavy metal--the loud and aggressive mother of the above three genres now considered tame or even mellow in comparison to its offspring.
One of the best aspects of this release is the poetic and simple-yet-intelligent lyrics. Like those of many other thrash bands, the lyrics are sped up and somewhat hard to understand, but the effort is worthwhile. "Darkened," the 8th track, illustrates this:
Spiritual awakening,
regression, removal of morality,
ways of Godless hearken foolish hearts,
have become darkened,
emotional experiment,
intellectual dishonesty.
The band use three of the tracks, "Inhabit," "Mind Distant," and "Departure," to show they have an ear for more than distortion and rapid-fire note progressions. The short, melodic riffs are well conceived and help to add variety to the album.
An unfortunate redundancy that weakens the album is two songs beginning with the same or a similar-sounding growl--far too obvious a repetition for even the most inattentive listener. The monotony of growly thrash vocals is bad enough, but a repeated growl is overkill.
Although thrash is a genre with a relatively small following compared to the entirety of modern music genres, Living Sacrifice knows their genre and honors it with this album.
3.5 tocks
Other coverage for this album
Dead Zine 2002Reviewed by SFhxcSFThis is the best christian death metal ever, if you want to argue otherwise, good for you. I so wish Lance Garvin would've kept this drum setup...hopes only hopes. Guitars.....what can you say about a six stringed piece of wood with coil wound magnets transmitting an electrical signal through a cord to an amplifier where it is amplified into some sound...well in the case of horribly awful music…Dead Zine 2002Reviewed by undeadFor those of you familiar with Living Sacrifice, you know as well as I do that with each progressing album, the sound has changed in small distinct ways, yet this makes each album set apart and different from one another. The vocals of Darren Johnson have gone from yelling, to an indecipherable growl, then finally to death. The guitars are also tuned way down and distorted as compared to the…Heaven's Metal #48Reviewed by Phil BorreroAs with anything in life, you, of course, want to improve. Living Sacrifice, since their debut album, has changed vocally and has added more velocity to what was already thought of as lightning speed. The four boys from Arkansas don't stop, but only keep improving. Inhabit shows musical maturity in that these guys can get slow 'n' heavy as a ton of bricks; but, at the same time, turn that around…Similar sounding releases
2005Pale HorseUntil the Last Seal Is Opened...
1999Embodyment1993-1996
1997ParamaeciumRepentance
2001xDisciplexDoxology
1998Day of AtonementCremation of the Guilty
1992CruciferFestival of DeathMore from Living Sacrifice
1991Living Sacrifice
2005In Memoriam
2000The Hammering Process
2002Conceived In Fire
1993Metamorphosis
1992Nonexistent
