When Sacrifice‘s debut album, Torment in Fire, ‘exploded’ in the UK thanks to a Roadrunner Records import in 1986, many of our number had never heard it’s chaotic like before; those of us who had tended to be of the punk persuasion, and Sacrifice’s mix of raw enthusiasm and intensity mixed with the excitement of hearing a band who didn’t seem to be quite proficient enough on their instruments to realise was was going on in their heads certainly appealed to that element.

The band took the best bits of Slayer, Possessed and Venom, injected a little bit of Canadian speed metal fervour into the mixture… and off they went. At times it sounded like an actual trainwreck; Production values were basic at best and non-existent for the most part, but still the vicious brilliance of the band managed to shine through on old faves like Homicidal Breath. Rob Urbinati‘s unhinged delivery on tracks like Possession was frankly – at the time – off the scale and just what we’d been looking for in the South London dens of iniquity we called home. As the best thrash and death bands became better and better, those of us still mired in the gutter required new Gods rooted to our reality and our levels of Cider-fuelled expectation. And utter madness like Decapitation looked to be just the ticket in every way.

High Roller‘s 2022 reissue of the album features a sparkling remaster from Patrick W Engel at Temple of Disharmony; he’s done a great job tidying up the on-the-edge-of-cacophony of the original production, rendering the album a little cleaner but no less powerful for all that. You can actually hear Urbinati and Joe Rico‘s riffs now, whilst Gus Pynn‘s cymbals now don’t just obliterate everything in a wash of white noise. I haven’t listened to the original of this for a good quarter of century, but listening now to this version I can see myself falling back in love with what was a great ‘of it’s moment’ record. Happy days!


NOTE: No video has been released as yet to accompany this release, but we’ve included this original version of Beyond Death anyway… High Roller’s Torment in Fire reissue releases on November 18th!