Sacred Reich - Ignorance/Surf Nicaragua: 3 Disc Special Edition

Here's one that falls into the category of "knife in the back of Ebay sellers everywhere." You see, the album and EP that make up this set went completely out-of-print somewhere around 2000 or so, and ever since then, copies have been popping up over there, going for anywhere between 20 and 40 dollars, which personally flipped out the former band members so much that things were set in motion to put the two out as one set, with a bunch of bonus tracks and a DVD included. Thing was, their old label from their early-90s flirtation with major-label credibility, Hollywood Records, basically turned into giant, festering douche bags about the whole thing, resulting in a two-year delay that left this a European exclusive, not be released over here, where Hollywood still owns the rights. However, knowing this, Metal Blade Germany priced the thing reasonably as hell, and even with overseas shipping, it can be picked up for a grand total of thirty dollars, ironically enough from Ebay. And hey, thirty for both beats thirty each, especially when a DVD is involved.

Anyway, if you're not familiar with the two main parts of this, they're basically in the category of "legendary recordings that no one's ever heard of," for the most part. Sacred Reich never really did get huge, and outside of a brief clip of the "American Way" video being shown in the Pauly Shore tour de force Encino Man, most regular folks have probably never encountered them in any form. But like I said earlier, Ebay sellers be damned, these two are now readily available for sale, much like those two Exhorder albums that everyone used to trip over themselves to buy for $50 apiece.

But anyway, the full-length album, Ignorance, is old school "see how fast you can move your hand up and down" mid-to-late 80s thrash metal that a million-and-one bands were doing at the time, after the whole Slayer thing took off. And it always seemed weird to me how Sacred Reich wasn't really doing anything all that different than any other band at the time, playing the same "chuggachuggachugga" riffs and singing about the same subjects, like toxic waste, nuclear war, and Freddy Krueger, but somehow, they just seemed better at it than the Sentinel Beasts and Faith or Fears of the world. And that basically describes this album. Raw, primitive, fast thrash metal, without much that's new or original, but with a lot that's awesome.

As the main part of disc 2, there's the Surf Nicaragua EP, a record I liked so much that I named a website after it. There are three new songs here, one cover, and two live Ignorance "bonus tracks," (apparently, they were supposed to be CD-exclusive back in the day, but ended up on the vinyl and cassette versions, too) with the title track being the be-all, end-all perpetual concert-closer of Sacred Reich songs, complete with dated late-80s political lyrics and the infamously awesome "Wipeout" tribute sandwiched between the first two verses and the guitar solo. After that, you've got "Draining You of Life" which I'm pretty sure was written to appear on Ignorance, and "One Nation," which previews the more slowed-down approach they'd take later, providing a nice little transitional piece between Ignorance and 1990's The American Way. Add in a cover of Black Sabbath's War Pigs, and this is pretty much one of the defining moments of their career.

Oh, and then, there are bonus tracks, too. Disc one has "The Big Picture," a cover of the MDC cover of a Subhumans song, originally taken from the "Open Book" radio station promo single, "Sweet Leaf," another Black Sabbath song from a NORML benefit compilation album, and the lone never-before-heard song on here, the Judas Priest cover, "Rapid Fire." This phantom track, whose existence was only hinted to once in a 1999-ish interview I read with Wiley Arnett a while back, is insanely cool, in that it has Rob Halford himself providing the vocals. It's weird that a double-set of their first two releases would include three tracks from the latter period of the band, with Dave McLain on drums, but I don't hear anyone complaining. On disc two, it gets more appropriate, with the entire 1986 Draining You of Life demo tape, as well as the version of "Ignorance" they recorded for an old Metal Massacre compilation album, as well as a version of "Sacred Reich" from the same sessions. These are a little rougher than the album versions, and Phil Rind really didn't seem to have gotten the whole vocalist thing down yet, but it's still neat to hear them as something other than an mp3 file from a millionth-generation cassette.

Oh yeah, speaking of bonus material, there's also a DVD included. Be forewarned, though, this is a European release, so it probably won't work with your DVD player. This is the part where I would go into some technical mumbo-jumbo about PAL and NTSC and all, but you have a computer and this is 2007, so you can just watch it on there, since the disc is region-free. Of course, that cheapo DVD recorder I bought for ninety bucks a few years ago had a built-in PAL converter, so I can watch it on my TV if I want, which is another one of the many ways in which I'm better than you. But anyway, the DVD is split into three sections. First, there's a little interview with the band from 1987, followed by a "video" of the song "Ignorance," which consists of them playing the song live in the place where they did the interview with the audio of the studio version of the song overdubbed. It's weird, but it'll do. After that, there's the band's full set from the 1989 Dynamo Open Air Festival in Eindhoven, Holland, which is the very same show that four songs were taken from for the 1989 Alive at the Dynamo EP. They're in rare form here, and the video quality isn't bad, although there are a few cases where the tracking got all messed up on the master tape. The audio, however is a flawless soundboard recording that makes me wish that the next thing that gets reissued is Alive at the Dynamo, but extended to have the whole show on it, instead of four songs. Finally, there's Just Say Sacred, a short camcorder-shot film by Eric Braverman that includes a few live performances, along with a whole crapload of "backstage" shenanigan" type footage, including a montage of injuries suffered at the show, a meeting with a t-shirt bootlegger, and the first annual "Phil Rind from Sacred Reich Will Draw a Mustache on Your Face" contest. Oddly enough, this is also the place where I learned that Phil Rind's last name is pronounced like "rend," and not like the outside of a cantaloupe. Seriously, in all my years of listening to this band, buying their albums, hunting down bootleg live videos on Ebay, and refusing to wear their shirts in public, because I get sick of having to explain myself to people who see a bald guy in a shirt that says the word "Reich" somewhere on it and assume the worst; after all that, I never knew the proper pronunciation of "Rind." Huh.
But yeah, you should all get this, it's kind of fantastic.

Track Listing:
Disc 1: Ignorance
1. Death Squad
2. Victim of Demise
3. Layed to Rest (Instrumental)
4. Ignorance
5. No Believers
6. Violent Solutions
7. Rest in Peace
8. Sacred Reich
9. Administrative Decisions
(bonus tracks)
10. Rapid Fire (with Rob Halford)
11. The Big Picture
12. Sweet Leaf

Disc 2: Surf Nicaragua
1. Surf Nicaragua
2. One Nation
3. War Pigs
4. Draining You of Life
5. Ignorance (Live)
6. Death Squad (Live)
(bonus tracks)
7. Draining You of Life (demo)
8. Ignorance (from Metal Massacre VIII)
9. No Believers (demo)
10. R.I.P. (demo)
11. Sacred Reich (demo)
12. Sacred Reich (Metal Massacre sessions)

Disc 3: DVD
1. Interview and "Ignorance" video
2. Dynamo Open Air 1989 live set
3. Just Say Sacred