music album REVIEW:
- Gary Numan: "Sacrifice" (1994)
– Another Gary Numan album … alright, I confess, I have a soft spot for his kind of music. There's something deep down that gives me a very direct emotional link with it. But this particular album has to be mentioned here in any case, because it too is so very dark (but as a concession I'll leave out my third most favourite Gary Numan album of all time, "Telekon", although it makes my heart bleed …).
"Sacrifice" was Gary Numan's 1994 big artistic turn-around, and in that sense his biggest come-back ever – or anybody's, really. Although it wasn't a come-back (yet) in commercial terms. That came later. But with "Sacrifice", Gary Numan took the big step of dropping virtually everything he had been trying to do for the previous 14 years or so, and returned to his true self, even recording virtually the entire album on his own. The outcome was a stunning statement – in fact my all-time favourite album of any kind. It's only in second place here because the follow-up, 1997's "Exile", was even darker, though not necessarily also better in every other respect. I regard the song-writing quality of "Sacrifice" a notch above "Exile". Nevertheless, there are some fantastically dark tracks on "Sacrifice" too – the opening alone makes your blood freeze instantly. The following track, "Deadliner", is probably the most intense description in song-format of having real scary nightmares – a theme later picked up again in the track "Bleed".
A real gothic highlight is also the track "A Question of Faith" – and in my view the definitive track of the album. Other than the dark bits, though, the album also contains two superb "love songs", though one of them (the finale) is more a "good-bye song" (of a very harsh sort, and as such pretty dark again …).
"Sacrifice" was Gary Numan's 1994 big artistic turn-around, and in that sense his biggest come-back ever – or anybody's, really. Although it wasn't a come-back (yet) in commercial terms. That came later. But with "Sacrifice", Gary Numan took the big step of dropping virtually everything he had been trying to do for the previous 14 years or so, and returned to his true self, even recording virtually the entire album on his own. The outcome was a stunning statement – in fact my all-time favourite album of any kind. It's only in second place here because the follow-up, 1997's "Exile", was even darker, though not necessarily also better in every other respect. I regard the song-writing quality of "Sacrifice" a notch above "Exile". Nevertheless, there are some fantastically dark tracks on "Sacrifice" too – the opening alone makes your blood freeze instantly. The following track, "Deadliner", is probably the most intense description in song-format of having real scary nightmares – a theme later picked up again in the track "Bleed".
A real gothic highlight is also the track "A Question of Faith" – and in my view the definitive track of the album. Other than the dark bits, though, the album also contains two superb "love songs", though one of them (the finale) is more a "good-bye song" (of a very harsh sort, and as such pretty dark again …).
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