NEW AMERICAN GOSPEL: Lamb of God - Sacrament

IV: Ant Scream

For a long time, I had considered Sacrament to be my unequivocal favorite Lamb of God album.  Time has softened it somewhat, but I'll spoil the ending a bit and say that this is probably the only album besides the debut where the non-single tracks feel less like filler and more like deep cuts, and that alone puts this a few pedestals higher than the snorefest that was Ashes of the Wake.

I think the thing that stands out the most about Sacrament is that this actually marked a pretty daring departure from the last two albums.  As the Palaces Burn and Ashes of the Wake were very similar albums, and while Sacrament certainly sticks close to a proven formula on certain tracks, they really did branch out and try a lot of new things with this one.  For example, for a band that had made it a habit to always open on something explosive and hard hitting, it was actually pretty ballsy to kick this album off with "Walk with Me in Hell", a starkly atmospheric and relatively slow track that even throws some subtle synths in the intro.  And then to follow it up with "Again We Rise", an oddly anthemic song that works so much better as a live singalong than the fucking embarrassment that was "Now You've Got Something to Die For", that tells me that they were making a statement with this record, and dammit I think they made it quite well.  They weren't going to stick with the formula like they did last time, and that's an ethos they stick with throughout the entire album.

That's not to say they never go back to the previous sound, because they definitely do on tracks like "Pathetic", "Foot to the Throat", and "More Time to Kill", and it's probably not a coincidence that the latter two songs there are two of the only true filler songs (the other being "Requiem", which takes the slightly more atmsopheric bent of "Again We Rise" but is simply less good).  This is probably the album where Lamb of God took the most risks while at the same time being the most accessible they'll ever be.  This is because at this point the metalcore element of their sound is almost totally gone apart from the odd breakdown here and there, instead replaced entirely with Pantera-esque groove.  I know that's a turnoff for a lot of metal fans, but I happen to think Pantera is great and as a result I think this album is pretty good as well.  "Redneck" is probably the best example of this, being the big "hit single" from this album and sounding like a lost session from The Great Southern Trendkill.  It's simultaneously very fast and groovy as hell, and turns into an extremely catchy song that's easy enough to be found on the radio but heavy enough to scare off most non-metal fans.  It's probably the weakest non-filler song on the album but it's still a lot of fun to caveman out to.  Pure knuckle dragging idiocy that I can't help but adore in its sincerity.

It's been a while since I've seen it, but certain editions of this album came with a bonus DVD detailing the making of this album, and due to that I've actually been waiting for the band to finally break up for a long time.  I know the Killadelphia DVD is more infamous for it showing how volatile the band was behind the scenes, with the unforgettable sequence of Randy Blythe picking a fight with Mark Morton while drunk off his ass and promptly getting his lights punched out, but the making of DVD included with Sacrament showed a much sadder side of the band.  After the infamous beatdown, Randy actually swore off alcohol and to my knowledge has been sober ever since (this is actually the lyrical subject of "Pathetic", if you were curious), and his newfound sobriety seemed to hang something of a dark cloud over the band, where absolutely nobody seemed interested in the recording process of this one.  The way the band wrote albums (at least back then) was for everybody to write a handful of songs on their own and then bring them into the studio already finished, where the rest of the guys would learn them and they'd collectively choose the best ones for the album.  This led to an environment where seemingly nobody was engaged with the whole process and turned a naturally organic process like songwriting into an individual exercise to later be culled via a band vote.  I recall them not being particularly receptive to Mark's contributions, because he's the guy who listens to the most non-metal when he's not working with the band and it apparently leaked into his songwriting.  There was some intense debate over whether or not to include one of his songs because they claimed it was a rock song and nobody wanted to hear a rock song plopped in the middle of a metal album.  Ultimately the song was included, and I can't remember which song it was.  It was either "Descending" or "Blacken the Cursed Sun" and both of them follow the lead of "Walk with Me in Hell" so I really have no idea what it is they objected to so much.  The guys were so focused on picking each others nits that they started to say bizarre nonsense that threatened to undermine the very creativity that makes this album so enjoyable.

For better or worse (better, at this point), the band trucked through these disagreements and delivered a solid album with way more ideas than your average Lamb of God album.  From the atmospheric elements of "Walk with Me in Hell" and "Blacken the Cursed Sun", to the new inclusion of several booming clean vocals, to the pure Pantera worship of "Redneck", to the high speed thrash influence of "Forgotten (Lost Angels)" and "Beating on Death's Door", to returning to the old formula and basically writing "The Faded Line" but actually good this time with "Pathetic", there's a lot to like here and I'm very impressed with what they were willing to experiment with here.  Even if the core sound is largely unchanged apart from fewer breakdowns and melodeath riffs, there are a lot of peripheral risks that make this one of their most interesting albums.  Despite being their most varied album, Sacrament is actually pretty hard to talk about because all I can think to do is point to a random track and say what different thing they tried to do, and I've exhausted that avenue already, so I'll just wrap this up now.

Sacrament is good, and easily the best of their "classic" trilogy that encompasses this and the previous two albums.  "Beating on Death's Door" is easily their most underappreciated song and "Lost Angels" isn't too far behind.  It was never their bread and butter, but when they just kick the tempo into high gear and border on thrash as much as they can, they can really strike gold.  "Foot to the Throat", "Requiem" and "More Time to Kill" are the token filler tracks, but that just means this album has nine good songs instead of two, and I'd say that's a pretty fucking huge improvement from its predecessor.


RATING: 80%