Sacrilege — The Fifth Season (1997)

Had they survived, I think Sacrilege had a chance to be one of the genuine names of Gothenburg metal, with emphasis on “chance.” As it goes though, drummer Daniel Svensson, who was really the heart of the band as we’ll come to discuss, left Sacrilege to join In Flames as their full-time drummer in 1998, bringing Sacrilege to an end. The band has attempted to reunite once with interesting musical results, but with Svensson now behind the kit for the shockingly mediocre supergroup The Halo Effect and a side gig brewing beer with bassist and also ex-In Flames bandmate Peter Iwers, it seems like Sacrilege is one for the history books. Which, honestly, is a shame, after hearing this record.

While still locked into many of the same tremolo-picky black-metal-ish tempos and feels of Lost In The Beauty You Slay, the follow-up, The Fifth Season has far less of the weirdo harmonic choices from the debut and more readily embraces the now-predominant aeolian tonality of the surrounding Gothenburg scene. That leaves us with another possibly stinging compromise. This record definitely suited my tastes a lot better because, I’m not sure if you can tell, but I’m really into this Gothenburg MDM sound, but it’s also sad that we didn’t get a band of a more, say, Norwegian bent using their relatively minimal arrangements to explore strange harmonic territory. (You could also call this approach to tonality Swiss if you wanted to be really specific and pedantic — which fits me to a tee.) Some of those “Norwayisms” are still here, but in much lower quantity than riffs that more easily fit into the established Gothenburg sound.

Philosophical conflict aside, the immediate sonic results are incredibly enticing. From the word go, “Summon The Masses and Walk Through The Fire” burns through the speakers with a signature Studio Fredman/Fredrik Nordstrom guitar tone but pushed to a decibel extreme because of the sheer one-speed aggression of the band playing the music. I think I mentioned it for their first record, but it really needs to be said here that drummer/vocalist Daniel Svensson’s harsh death metal vocals here are just an absolute delight, incredibly aggressive, especially as he delivers us these nice, cleanly-rhyming bits of metal aesthetics such as the chorus:

Enslaved and weak I worship thee
you are my master you made me meek
Enslaved and weak I worship thee
you are my master, command me a deed

Arguably the highlight of the entire album is at 2:49 when Svensson just rips the words “You are my master/you made me . . . meeeeeeeek” as what had been a shuffle jam turns into a 4/4 stomper with a riff that, almost by itself, convinced me this group had taken a huge artistic leap forward. What had previously been a riff salad approach has matured into a much more mature sense of song structure where dynamic shifts like this are not only “earned,” but are also executed much better. As well, perhaps I buried the lede, because “Summon the Masses” is better than any track on their debut album that I can name other than, maybe, “Beyond the Gates of Pain.”

Unfortunately, for as good as Svennson’s vocals are, the lack of a real lyrical vision here sort of limits the impact of the vocals beyond their excellent rhythmic arrangements. The lyrics aren’t laughably bad or anything, but I would say that they lack either easily-derived meaning of any sort, nor any sort of memorable moments of bewildering aesthetics. They’re very much in the style of how the big bands were doing things, but just without the real inspiration.

“Sweet Moment of Triumph” is also excellent. It’s hard to put these things into words without becoming overly reliant on theory talk, so it’s probably best to simply say that Sacrilege just came at this melodic death metal thing from a different angle. This rhythmically-offset riff to open “Sweet Moment” is an excellent example, using the same scalar approach as other Gothenburg groups, but landing on something a bit more adventurous in terms of timing. This track also shows off Sacrilege’s newfound instantaneous mastery of the MDM guitar lead, leaning into the sort of linear, folk-ish melodies that makes so much early In Flames great while yet still playing in a way that isn’t all that stylistically reminiscent of Bjorn or Jesper’s lead playing.

“Nine Eyes of Twilight” continues with similar momentum, opening with what I think can be fairly described as Sacrilege’s signature style of Gothenburg death metal tinged with some Norwayisms before breaking down into a slightly more Tampa Bay style “ugly” riff climaxed with a pinch harmonic, and then one of the great moments of the record happens at 2:03 when Svensson plays a quick drum fill followed by an absolutely triumphant harmonized riff, with the left guitar palm muting through a tensing and resolving minor 1 to major VI progression while the right guitar floats around the aeolian scale adding a melodic figure in the same range that sort of passes through notes that the left guitar is on its way to further destinations. It really gives off the feel of one guitarist having come up with an excellent riff and then the other guitarist being so inspired by that riff that they just let it rip over that, coincidental dissonances or overlaps be damned. It’s a really “liberated” moment. The tension created by the rising and falling of this riff then crashes down into something of an extended chorus at 2:36 that releases all of the energy before the motor then revs back up, transporting the song from 6/8 into straight 4/4, a section that then brings us back around into the first set of riffs up until that ends in the 2:36 riff to send us home.

To be honest, the songwriting approach hasn’t really changed too much here from the band’s first record. In classic death metal fashion riffs are stapled to each other end on end with the hopes that the audience will perceive this as a coherent structure. It’s an approach that usually lives and dies on the quality of the riffs and the incidental nature of how those riffs “seem” to connect to each other as we listen. The simple truth is that on The Fifth Season a more consistent and arguably more inspired set of riffs comes together into songs that feel more energetic, exciting, and cohesive.

The undeniable highlight of the album comes in the form of track 4, “Feed The Cold.” I could beat around the bush, but what makes this song excellent is simple. It starts in high energy with some tremolo picked Norwayisms before moving into a tense palm-muted pre-chorus with a key change that then explodes into an incredible headbanging chorus with one of the most memorable, singable lead guitar melodies in this genre. Were I not already sold on the excellence of this record from its opening one-two punch, this song not only solidifies that this is a really solid record, one that’s worth going out of your way to find if you have even a passing interest in downtuned melodic metal of this variety.

Title track “The Fifth Season” is actually, funny enough, one of the classic instrumental interludes often found on these records. Tracks like these tend to be hard to describe. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I really enjoy these sorts of calm interludes on otherwise very angry sounding albums. What’s interesting is that this one is a totally acoustic number, but it actually works through the same song formatting that has served the record so far, with a sort of creepy intro eventually bending totally smoothly into an absolutely gorgeous chord progression. And while I don’t think The Fifth Season is as inspired a title as Lost In The Beauty You Slay, the meaning of it is much more direct. Life is often seen in seasons. The fourth season is winter, when the body grows frail and cold. The fifth season, then, is death.

As we come around on track 6, “Moaning Idiot Heart,” (awesome song title,) it’s hard for me to say that Sacrilege has done anything other than master the new more melodically focused style they’d adopted, in this case delivering more on the 6/8 dual-riffing of a more rhythmic guitar played against a more free-floating melodic guitar in a similar register we heard on “Nine Eyes of Twilight.” Every track burns with thick guitar tones rendered incredibly dense through the harmonic interactions of the dual-guitar interplay, and finished off at the top end with the throat burning screams of drummer and bandleader Daniel Svensson. Aside from the whack ass reverb they threw on his snare drum, he’s awesome on this record.

While this record is, in the overall, quite strong, it’s sticking in my brain because of particular transcendent moments. The “You are my master you make me meek” riff from the opening, the 2:03 riff from “Nine Eyes,” and the chorus from “Feed The Cold.” Moments like these are really simple, really hard to describe the impact of in words that aren’t “this is awesome,” and that’s part of why this review has taken so long to be written and held up the project for as long as it has. I’ve come to peace with the idea that I should try and describe these in as much detail as is reasonable and move on without having additional lyrical analysis to add, which I don’t. But it suffices to say that another one of these inspired moments occurs on the opening riff of “Dim with Shame” where Svensson accents the bouncy opening riff with a china hit on the upbeats in imitation of the classic dance music beat that gives this riff a really fun vibe, a riff that then gives way to, what else, an excellent track.

Things do admittedly start to taper off near the end of the record, which is a bad time for things to taper off. “Seduction Nocturne” has many of the best moments on the record but also tries to marry an acoustic section and some riffing that don’t quite congeal, though the song is still carried to at least goodness by its best parts. “In Winter Enticed” is an even more extreme example of the same idea with seconds of acoustic edited in between heavy riffing that comes off very strange, the sort of thing most bands would present as a joke. The right guitar channel also has some very strange processing on it, I think it’s a phaser? It was not a good idea. There are some very good riffs on this song as well, but its uncharacteristic strangeness prevents it from reaching the heights of the real album highlights, though the lead guitar melody that plays at various points is exactly what you paid to hear. With “Sorg” being an instrumental to close the album, “In Winter Enticed” was a very strange choice to, functionally, close the album.

Thankfully, I think “Sorg” (Swedish for “sorrow,” what did you expect,) bookends the album quite nicely. The song proceeds in an almost balladic 3/4 fashion with mournful arpeggio “verses” broken by an octave harmonized lead, the sort that guitarists Bergholz and Dinsdale did really well and in their own distinct style here. While the use of audio processing effects did not serve the music on “In Winter Enticed,” here it’s used very dramatically with further and further effects stacking onto the guitars and then each instrument as the album fades, as though the preceding balladry represented people seeing that the end was coming, and now, it has arrived . . . and then right at the tail end after the mix literally explodes somebody says something in Swedish. Probably Nordstrom demanding another take.

Conclusion: Since starting this series, I was hoping to find, for lack of a better term, Practice What You Preach type albums, masterpieces by bands slightly below the surface level of the big names that have been somewhat lost in the shuffle of history for more evidently impactful albums to eat up discussion space. I think The Fifth Season is exactly that sort of record, a nearly track by track monster with iconic moment after iconic moment from a band that, had they continued, would certainly have made their mark as one of the best bands in their style. In 2002, Century Media records released a 2-CD compilation of both of the bands studio albums, and if you’re a fan of this style of metal I think you’d be a fool not to own that, I know I’ll certainly be hunting a copy down.