Toronto’s Sacrifice still talking thrash after long hiatus

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 05/11/2009 (6165 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Like the protagonist of its best-known song, Sacrifice is reanimated.

The legendary Toronto thrash metal band is officially back from the dead with a new album, The Ones I Condemn, its first since splitting in 1993.

"The whole thrash-metal thing kind of died down and grunge and death metal had taken over," says vocalist-guitarist Rob Urbinati over the phone from his Toronto home.

"A lot of bands in our genre either went the alternative route or into something else and we weren’t really comfortable in doing that. Our forward progress had stopped, so we said, ‘Let’s call it a day.’ We didn’t want to soften our sound or change who we were."

Urbinati, guitarist Joe Rico, bassist Scott Watts and drummer Gus Pynn went their separate ways and were involved in other musical projects, none of which had the same impact as Sacrifice. Since the group broke up, Urbinati has been playing in the band Interzone while working for a pharmaceutical company.

He was approached by a Toronto promoter about a Sacrifice reunion in 2005, but with Rico living in Detroit and Watts in Vancouver, the idea was dismissed until a year later when the quartet decided to play a one-off show in Toronto to celebrate the re-release of the albums Torment in Fire, Forward to Termination and Soldiers of Misfortune on Brazilian label Marquee Records.

"It took a good few months for us to be able to even passably get through some songs," Urbinati says with a laugh. "I’ve always been playing thrash, but Sacrifice chops are different. I didn’t realize how difficult our songs were. I guess it’s like an athlete: you have to keep your training up."

Sacrifice formed in Toronto in 1983 and released four albums before breaking up a decade later. Along with Voivod, Razor and Annihilator, Sacrifice helped define Canada’s metal scene in the 1980s. Their single Reanimation was an instant thrash classic and became the band’s anthem, thanks in part to the black-and-white video, which garnered numerous plays on MuchMusic and MTV.

Numerous North American tours with the likes of Megadeth, Nuclear Assault and C.O.C. followed and the band’s name became known worldwide through underground tape-trading networks.

"We used to get fan mail from Asia, South America and Eastern Bloc countries at the time," Urbinati says. "Poland and Czechoslovakia were really foreign to western kids like us, but we used to get tons of mail from there, and the old Soviet Union too. People found this stuff by whatever means,"

One of the people who found them was Brazilian Armando Pereira, owner of Marquee Records. His company re-released the first three Sacrifice albums with bonus demos and live material, setting the stage for the reunion and new album, which sounds like a natural followup to 1991’s Soldier’s of Misfortune.

"We hadn’t been thinking about anything else but (that first show in Toronto). It was probably the best show we ever played. It opened our eyes to try to write a couple of songs and see where it goes. We set boundaries. It would have to be comparable to our best older stuff, and it was."

The one-off turned into two shows, the second last year in Winnipeg at the Zoo. That gig further cemented the idea to write and record a new album, which they will celebrate during two more shows: one in Toronto and one at the Garrick Centre Saturday. Opening acts are Propagandhi — who wrote the song The Banger’s Embrace on their latest album, Supporting Caste, about their trip to Toronto to see the reunion show — Evil Survives and Striker. Tickets are $22 at ticketworkshop.com.

"We have some kind of special connection with Winnipeg," Urbinati says. "You have (promoter) Cory (Thomas) there, who treats us great, and the Propagandhi guys are there. (Bassist) Todd (Kowalski) sent me a CD and I had no idea the song was on the album. I was sitting at the computer reading along with the lyrics and I started reading ahead and I saw some Sacrifice. That was one of the best things I ever got from being in Sacrifice. It’s great to hear something like that, an established great band like them and how much it meant to them.

"That is really amazing. It’s humbling for us."

rob.williams@freepress.mb.ca