Diamonds & Rust: Punk Meets Doom, And The Result Is Literally Sacrilege

[Cover artwork by Angus McKie]

As a result of punk rock’s penchant for speed and aggression that eventually fueled the fires of the NWOBHM, we are all well aware that punk and heavy metal have long been cozy bedfellows—basically since metal’s earliest inception. Those of us who came into the heavies back in the dinosaur age with overly melodic and fantastical intentions rooted in escapism perhaps didn’t notice punk’s influence on bands like Iron Maiden and Raven at the time, but its impact became more and more evident as we scuttled along and wolfed down bands like Motörhead and records such as English Dog’s Forward Into Battle (1985), most anything from Voivod (Dimension Hatröss being a personal favorite), Warfare’s Metal Anarchy (1985) and Mayhem, Fuckin’ Mayhem (1986), and so on and so forth in excess to the Nth degree.

As far as pure punk is concerned, for me that was something mostly relegated to what got thrown my way by skater friends, because plumbing the depths of an intensely active metal scene throughout the ‘80s pretty much syphoned all of my available funds. Hence, tape-trading became paramount, bringing bands such as D.I., The Accüsed, Septic Death, Angry Samoans, The Exploited and Bad Brains into my sphere, which in turn paved the way for getting into the more extreme shifts of hardcore and the anarcho-punk, grindcore and crust scenes that developed directly alongside death metal.

Amidst all that overindulgence, though, there was a very mighty curveball hurled into the foray—a record that leveled the playing field as mightily with its sluggish heft as it did with its unmitigated… puzzlement:

Virtually everyone else was pushing the envelope by throttling at full speed and beyond, and here comes this mysterious black slab of slothful perplexity that… might be Christian (or, at the least, sloooowly righteous) and also appeared to be made up of three hippies and one biker who happened to wander into the photo because he was zooted out of his fucking mind.

Now, the Vitus connection to punk has been well documented over the years, but in case someone needs a 10¢ synopsis: they were (and continue to be) an anomalous LA band that went over like a shart in church within the metal community because they opted to drink rocket fuel instead of letting it power their engines. For whatever reason, though—or precisely because of the previously stated reason—the band caught the eye and ear of Black Flag chief architect Greg Ginn, who whooshed them onto his punk label (SST), threw them onto the stage to open for his band, and subsequently worked that Vitus (by way of Sabbath) leaden imprint into Black Flag’s music, which resulted in an equally perplexing and sluggish side B to Black Flag’s sophomore effort, My War (March 1984).

You can hear punk in the early Vitus footprint, too, thanks largely to Dave Chandler’s devotion to reckless abandon, and I’m guessing I’m not the only one who gleaned a stack of new punk bands to investigate via the album’s thank you list, which included greats such as Discharge (!!!), Necros, Charged G.B.H, Dead Kennedys, The Damned, Germs, Fear, Devo, et al.

Was this the first true handshake between punk and doom, though? Hell if I know. To be honest, I don’t even recall the first time we as a people began calling the slow-rollers ‘doom’. No doubt, some would have a hard time considering the Vitus debut punk in the least, and I’m sure someone out there has evidence of Sabbathian slowness creeping into pure punk prior to My War, but that point on the timeline was a notable irregularity, and the two seemingly opposed sub-genres continued to fuse in interesting ways from that point forward. Granted, the most prolific upshot was sludge, so hails to the earliest collision for setting the stage for bands like EHG, Acid Bath, Neurosis, Cult of Luna, etc. Aside from that, though, the collision conjured heavy phlegm into the swiftly climbing crust and grind scenes, as evidenced by future releases from Amebix, Deviated Instinct and the largely forgotten Prophecy of Doom (some of the most insane vocals on their debut, Acknowledge the Confusion Master), not to mention laying the groundwork for sludge crust and neo-crust akin to Dystopia and His Hero Is Gone / Tragedy even further down the line. So, yes, the fusion of punk and doom resulted in a buttload of goodness that continues to produce absolute belters today.

Where England’s Sacrilege enters the narrative marks an interesting and unusual deviation in and of itself, particularly considering how different the band sounds when we compare their start and finish lines.

A prime example of hitting at the right time and place, Sacrilege rumbled onto the UK scene in 1984 as a fledgling crust band cobbled together by guitarist Damian Thompson and singer Lynda “Tam” Simpson, after the former spent time with eventual Sacrilege drummer Andy Baker in Warwound and The Varukers. Their earliest manifestation was built on a foundation heavily indebted to Discharge, but they separated themselves from their peers by approaching the conventional “society is fucking fucked” motif from a Tolkien perspective, which was completely alien inside the punk / crust scene.

Two years would pass following the crusty wrath of the debut full-length Behind the Realms of Madness, and with the band’s sophomore (and most widely celebrated) effort, 1987’s Within the Prophecy, it was clear Sacrilege was keeping their collective thumb on the pulse of what metal was pushing at the time, as Prophecy folded in a considerable dose of mid-80s’ thrash akin to Master of Puppets, Onslaught’s The Force, Détente’s Recognize No Authority, Nuclear Assault’s Game Over, and of course Slayer’s Reign In Blood. No surprise to anyone that the broiling world of thrash melded as seamlessly with crust as it did the more straightforward punk and hardcore realms that summoned crossover, but as the thrash scene continued its trajectory of burning fast, burning bright and then quickly burning out, Sacrilege proceeded to set their sights in a completely unexpected direction for their next venture.

Was Turn Back Trilobite as big a hairpin turn as, say, Discharge’s Grave New World (1986) or Celtic Frost’s Cold Lake (1988)? Yes, actually, but in a far less… contentious way, as those two acid-washed records—while admittedly a fascinating study now four decades later—sounded as if Discharge and Celtic Frost had spent the entirety of their studio time huffing L’ORÉAL. By contrast, Turn Back Trilobite emphasized the idea that Damian and Tam (the unmistakable core of Sacrilege) had rumbled across and thereby absorbed the following hallowed triple double before getting down to the business of developing full-length number three:

Doom was now fully in the picture, but instead of opting for the sludgier variety like a number of their peers, Sacrilege delivered a classic brand of doom that elicited allegations of “going soft” or “selling out.” Sure, shifting from the punk and crust days that connected them to the likes of Concrete Sox, Chaos UK and Pushead into a world where they were suddenly pushed by Metal Blade alongside acts such as Lizzy Borden and Fates Warning was a little… startling, but the thought of anyone “selling out” by morphing into a style that was for-fucking-sure a hundred times less fashionable than most any genre of music at the time remains laughable to the point of self-detonation.

With a new trajectory now fully mapped out, a fresh set of faces was brought into the fold in the form of bassist Frank Healy (Memoriam, ex-Benediction, ex-Cerebral Fix, ex-Napalm Death) and drummer Spikey T. Smith (Memoriam, ex-Conflict, ex-English Dogs, ex-The Damned, ex-Morrissey), and both members delivered the goods when it came to matching the bolder, more elegant fretwork Thompson now yanked under the spotlight. Splashy cymbal play and an energetic bass romped brightly alongside all the steely doom riffs, and Tam’s voice—finding a new level of refinement with each subsequent release—was perhaps surprisingly delicate on the record’s mellower numbers and capably vigorous when a cut delivered a bit more thunder, like “Silent Dark.”

Oh, how easy it is to picture a vocalist like Eric Wagner or Reagers to bust in as “Silent Dark” skates from the gate with that classic melodic doom riff, and the band still maintains a semblance of their thrashier face once that 3:30 mark hits—something that’s really nailed home when the album allows a little more of that decelerated Ride the Lightning flare to enter the picture. Point of fact, there exists some (likely coincidental) shades of Hammett circa 1984 in the early Trouble blueprint, largely in that unmistakable guitar tone, and obviously when the doom starts to hustle, so it isn’t such a surprise to hear it here as well. The closing minute of “Key to Nirvana” is the clearest example of the album’s Lighting-isms, but the majority of the time things mostly whiff of early Trouble, like the second half of “Soul Search.”

That beautifully somber and mellow launch to “Soul Search” could have been torn right from the pages of Epicus Doomicus Metallicus, and the Thompson lead that quickly drifts in is absolutely magnificent. Tam’s soothing delivery is also golden here, and light keyboard strings bring another level of dramatic solemnity before things eventually head toward heavier waters just after the halfway point. True, a record like Within the Prophecy showed Sacrilege was capable of finesse, but Turn Back Trilobite delivered a next level of sophistication under the doom design that should have pinged most any slow-banger’s radar, yet it continues to fly mostly undetected as one of doom’s most unsung jewels. Just listen to “Into the Sea of Tranquility (Pt. 1, 2 & 3),” clearly the apex of the record, and witness just how far Sacrilege leapt skill-wise from their comparatively humble crust beginnings.

Stretching to nearly 12 minutes, “Sea of Tranquility” does a wonderful job of integrating the full breadth of the band’s doom influences, with equal emphasis given to the hushed moments and those weightier Trouble hustles. For me, it’s the quieter face of the song that slays the hardest, particularly Pt. 2, by virtue of delivering scads of delicate leads augmented by Tam’s beautifully serene delivery. There are moments where the heft really hits and lifts, for sure, but it’s the way the song delivers that “sink into the cushions” contentment that really sells the plot, even if its overt softness pissed off some crusties. That being said, it was definitely a smart move to end the record with “Equinox,” a very Candlemassive number that closed things on a much more urgent note that even manages to conjure Obliveon-levels of technical thrash by its 4 minute-mark.

Ultimately, any effort spent wondering what could’ve been had Sacrilege managed to eke out one more doom album a year or two after Turn Back Trilobite is nothing short of futile, but here I am, daydreaming about what might’ve been next. Truthfully, though, based on the full breadth of styles delivered across the band’s fairly scant catalog, it seems pretty likely that a timely follow-up would’ve switched gears entirely again. I just find it curious that what some people interpreted as “selling out” to me seemed more like Sacrilege simply “rolling with the times,” so it’s feasible that they could’ve dropped something more death / doomy in the early stages of the ’90s—a record along the lines of Winter’s Into Darkness, maybe, but still offsetting the heaviness with those floating moments tattooed up and down Trilobite’s sleeves.

Unfortunately, the Sacrilege tale would end shortly after the release of Trilobite, with Damian and Tam finally becoming disenchanted with the extreme music scene as a whole and running off to start a family in… um… a converted bus. But, they left us with three full-lengths that are all impactful enough to be celebrated like this three-plus decades later, and that is very far from a bad thing. So, why pull what some Sacrilege fans would consider to be the band’s least prominent record under the spotlight for a piece like this? Simple: I’m an old doomhead, this is my favorite Sacrilege release, and Turn Back Trilobite still stands today as one of doom metal’s most overlooked classic. Simple put, a forever underrated gem that found a perhaps unexpected path to doom glory.

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Bonus track: Here’s the converted bus Damian and Tam called home following the halt of Sacrilege activity, courtesy of the band’s official FB page