Awakening

Awakening Review by James Christopher Monger

Awakening is the long-gestating fifth full-length effort from veteran Phoenix-based crossover thrashers Sacred Reich, who alongside contemporaries like Testament, Death Angel, Destruction, and Dark Angel, helped to establish the second wave of the thrash metal movement of the late 1980s. Employing a lethal blend of sociopolitical lyrics and neck-snapping speed metal strapped to a hardcore punk chassis, the band issued four influential albums before ceasing operations in 2000. Led by bassist/vocalist Phil Rind, the group re-formed in 2006 for a series of live shows, but it took another 13 years to get back into the studio. The resulting eight-track set -- which features a lineup consisting of Rind, long-serving guitarist Wiley Arnett, guitarist Joey Radziwill, and on-again, off-again Reich drummer and longtime Machine Head kit man Dave McClain -- delivers a punitive amalgam of classic West Coast thrash and bruising groove metal. Rind may no longer traffic in the same DEFCON 1 levels of satire and nihilism that fueled early works like Surf Nicaragua and American Way -- he spent the last two decades, among other ventures, studying Tibetan Buddhism -- but he weaponizes that hard-won positivity on pugilistic cuts like "Divide & Conquer" and "Killing Machine." Towards the end of their initial run, Sacred Reich began adding elements of melodic hard rock and groove metal to their arsenal, a predilection they continue to hone on more trad-metal offerings like the Sabbath-y "Salvation" and fist-pumping "Death Valley." That said, the punishing title track, which evokes pre-Black Album-era Metallica, and the searing punk-metal scorcher "Revolution" hew closer to the sonic savagery of the band's halcyon days, but in consort with Rind's more thoughtful approach to writing lyrics, they seek nuance amidst the perceived wreckage of the human condition.