It took a long time for legendary Canadian thrash band Sacrifice to come up with a new album but finally "Volume Six" is out (read full review here) and so I took the chance to have a nice chat with Rob Urbinati (voc / git) to get some urgent questions answered. Enjoy reading the interview and check out their latest record if you haven't yet.

Michael

Hi Rob, thanks for taking the time for the interview – how are you doing?

Hey, thanks for taking the time for me, too. Just waiting for a big snow storm here in Toronto (laughs). But everything is good.

First of all congratulations for the new album, in retrospect I should have give it at least a .5 more in the rating. It really grows with the time and is a great follow-up to "The Ones I Condemn". Were there some songs left from that one or why does it sound quite similar to it?

We just continued in the Sacrifice-style. There was no real material left over. There are actually a lot of songs that are demoed but what ended up happening was that I would cannibalize parts from some songs (laughs). I had one song and thought that I would need this part and I went back and listened to it and some of the other stuff I demoed and took a part of it and put it into another song (laughs). I mean I have a lot of leftover material but a lot of it is already incorporated on songs on "Volume Six".

I was super excited when I read the announcement that you are going to release a new album. Why did it take 16 years for that?

First of all, Sacrifice isn't a full-time profession if you know what I mean. We work like everybody else does and we do this during our work vacations and stuff like that. Us not being a full-time band, that has a bit to do with it. The other is, I guess I hear other bands that have been around for as long as us say the same thing. It's not even necessary for you to do an album. When you play live people usually want to hear your first three albums and that's just the way it is. I think it was around 2017 when we started thinking about recording, then the pandemic hit and it was difficult for us to rehearse and everything. That three or four years really put a dent into our plans but here we are (laughs).

What about the EP I read about two years ago? Are there still plans to do this one?

Well, that were the actual plans for "Volume Six" actually. We thought we were doing an EP but the songs kept coming and we got to the point where we said let's do a full album.

Comparing "Volume 6" to the first albums in your career, you haven't changed too much. Not in the style, nor in spreading so much energy and what I find quite remarkable not in your vocals. You sound as young as on "Soldiers Of Misfortune". What's the recipe for that?

That's a really hard question to answer. I don't think our style has really changed all that much over the years. I think stylistically we might have changed because we became better on our instruments and we had more of a vocabulary to express our music. Vocally for me, I'm by no means like Rob Halford or anything (laughs) so I mean I'm sort of limited in that respect but at the same time you kinda have to keep on top of that. When you're not necessarily a kind of singer but more like a vocalist it still takes some level of technique. People like us that know the music well, we can tell when someone is a good extreme vocalist or not, right (laughs)? You do understand that there is some kind of technique behind the whole thing so you just have to keep on top of that and I think if I wasn't to do any vocals for a long time it definitely shows. It's like guitar playing – if you're not playing you have to get your fingers moving again.

Do you do some special training for your vocals? I remember that Marc Grewe from Morgoth for example told me he got some lessons from Birgit Zacher who was an opera singer and who also sang on "Opium" by Moonspell.

No, I've never taken any vocal training. Over the years I just figured out what works and what doesn't work. I think the older I get, especially before we play live, I kinda have to do a bit of vocal warm-up, not like yelling and screaming, I'm doing my vocal chords and watch what you drink, too. I don't know if that is for every extreme metal vocalist but if I used to have a fruit juice before I go on stage, my voice would be shredded (laughs). Something about the citrus in metal vocals don't mix (laughs). Along the way I just learned certain things to do and not do and I've been doing this for a very long time now so I feel pretty comfortable in my regiment.

You have a stable line-up for many many years – is Sacrifice some sort of family for you guys?

Yeah, pretty much. When we got together we were basically kids. When we first started playing live all the other bands we played with and opened for said "oh my god, you guys are kids!". Now it's completely flipped over and we're the guys playing with kids. Through the years we watched how our family has grown and we've kept in touch and know each other very well. Especially musically when we get in the rehearsal room we all know how each other plays and that's a big part of our sound, too. Know anybody for such a long time you know them pretty well. You know their personality and we're like a family, like you said, yeah.

What you don't have is a stable label, sorry for that pun….You are currently signed by High Roller Records. How did it come that a German record label signed you and are you confident with their work?

Here in North America, it is Cursed Blessings and they do a great job, yes. High Roller did re-issues for us and they looked fantastic. There's a big reason why we wanted to go back with them. The level of work they put into the packaging of everything was just great. We're very happy with everything they did for us.

Lyrically "Volume Six" is quite interesting, too. On one side there are some psychological-based lyrics like "Antidote Of Poison" or the opener but you also focus quite strongly on problems which concern us all like global warming and the associated mass extinction like in "Underneath Millenia" or "Incoming Mass Extinction". How important is it for you to speak out the truth which obviously fewer and fewer people want to hear and accept?

I guess it's demoralizing for a lot of people. When you see stuff posted on social media you can pretty much tell what the propaganda is and what's not and whether it's coming from a real person or whether it's not. I was trying to stay away from all that stuff but a lot of people don't. They eat up all the propaganda and all the bullshit that they see online all the time. We all know people like that. I just call them the weird political internet guys. Especially this year the world feels like it's taking a dark turn. A lot of this album was written over the pandemic as well and I think that was a part of the time where a lot of this misinformation and bad propaganda started popping up on everybody's feeds. I guess it just speaks to that, it's hard to be optimistic in this world these days with what's going on.

With "Trapped In World" you did a cover song by Direct Action which speaks out something I quite often feel, too: this helplessness you might feel when you see all the shit around you and the resignation coming along with it. Did you choose that one because of the actual situation?

No, not really. Direct Action was a band I used to go see a lot when I was young. They were a hardcore band and that time there wasn't a whole lot of metal happening in the city that I wanted to go and see. Back when we were first starting out with Sacrifice there was a lot more kind of glam or trying-to-get-on-the-radio kind of metal. And there was hardcore, and we discovered it and thought that this is more like what we were doing. So we went to see these bands play and there was a band I will never forget, even though they haven't been active in probably close to forty years. It was a band that was special to me in my youth and we just decided to do that song.

Brian Taylor is doing some vocals on that song too. He also produced your first three albums.

Yes, Brian back when we met him, he was a vocalist in a hardcore band here in Toronto called Youth Youth Youth. The band broke up but Brian also had a radio show. He played a lot of metal and hardcore on and he worked in the record store everybody would buy the metal from here. We probably would have never done anything without his help. He recorded our first demo, got us our first record deal. Funny enough he released an album last year as a hardcore album. The band's called O.L.D. and I just loved it. We talked amongst ourselves if Brian could do some vocals and luckily he was into it, so here we go (laughs).

But that band OLD is not the band that was on Earache in the 80s, right?

No. This is a hardcore band and I think the album came out in 2024, if I'm not mistaken.

I am not the biggest fan of instrumental songs – you have not only one but two on the album, why?

I don't think we really put any thought into why we are doing two instrumental songs. It's more like we like the songs and said let's go for it. I mean when I wrote "Black Hashish", that's the longer instrumental it felt like it didn't really need any vocals on it. My daughter did some kind of atmospheric vocals on it but there is no lyrics to the song. I just felt like it told a story enough for me without vocals on it. It's very much like for big fans of Rush instrumentals from the 70s like "La Villa Strangiato". That's out thrash metal take on that style.

I looked up on metal-archives and saw that there are about 190 bands which named their album Volume XY and of course Black Sabbath is the most popular one. Of course it is your sixth full-length but didn't you have any cooler ideas as a title?

Well, it's our sixth album and the last thing is to look up on metal-archives and see if 190 bands have named their album "Volume something". One thing for us is we've realized that if you title your album after one of the songs on your album, that's the title track and that's the focus on from everybody. We didn't want that, we wanted the whole album to be the focus and that's why we called it "Volume Six".

Apropos Black Sabbath – what do you think about their final show this July and the "fan-friendly" ticket-prices, be it for charity or not?

I just heard that they are getting back together and that it sold out within something like 15 minutes which is to be expected. I mean any big show here in Toronto will sell out in that time, too.

But do you know what the cheapest ticket was?

No, I didn't hear.

It was about 250 USD.

I mean here Metallica was playing for 400 Canadian Dollars. A big ticket concert is off the books for me now. Big concerts are out of reach for regular people when it costs that much to go see a band, I just stay home (laughs).

Yes, and I think the irony in it is that it is called "Back To The Roots"….

Yeah, I struggle to think how many songs Sabbath will perform. Ozzy doing two sets I've heard like doing an Ozzy solo set and a Sabbath set. I mean Black Sabbath is my favorite band ever. I'd like to see it but luckily enough I got to see them back in 2000 so I'm good (laughs).

What about Sacrifce? Do you have any plans to go on tour or do some festival shows this year?

We do have some plans to go out and play but there's nothing set in stone. We just have one show completely booked in Vancouver that's definitely confirmed. We've got a couple of things we've been talking about but nothing confirmed yet. We'd love to get over for a couple of festivals in Europe this year but because we're not a touring band it's difficult to make it work. Come over and play one or two festivals is difficult, we're basically coming over to play three or more festivals because our guarantee in Europe isn't the same as we get here in North America. But if someone's out there that wants to book us, give us a show!

The last words belong to you!

I just like to say thank you for taking the time to interview me and I hope everybody enjoys the album!