Sacred Oath's Broken History Has Finally Led to a Promising Future

Sacred Oath have come a long way since their debut album "A Crystal Vision" — some twenty plus years ago. Now, they have just released what many believe is their best recording to date, the self-titled Sacred Oath; an indie release of old school metal with a great contemporary vibe.

PART ONE: THE NEW ALBUM

POWERLINE: Sacred Oath seems completely re-energized with this new release. The album being self-titled — as if it were a debut album —is almost fitting.
Rob Thorne: It’s a total rebirth for the band, and not in the sense that we’ve been revamped… we haven’t. But I really feel like we’ve been in a gestational underground for twenty years and all of a sudden we have been given this opportunity and privilege to be put in front of a bigger audience so in many ways it is really a rebirth for us.

POWERLINE: How did you keep your vocals in such good shape after all these years?
Rob Thorne: I never stopped singing. When Sacred Oath broke up, I went to college and majored in opera for four years…

POWERLINE: Ah, that explains a lot.
Rob Thorne: ... and then when I graduated college I started Soundscape and did that all through the 90s, and wrote a couple rock operas. I was as active as I am now, just not with Sacred Oath.

POWERLINE: You know, I never heard Soundscape.
Rob Thorne: Soundscape is sort of a prog rock/prog metal thing.

POWERLINE: Does it sound a little like Dream Theater type stuff?
Rob Thorne: A little more diverse. Dream Theater is a little straight up prog metal all the time. Soundscape is prog metal and then it goes off into a prog rock thing. You'll hear a lot of influences of Yes and Kansas.

POWERLINE: So, how's the response been for the new album?
Rob Thorne: I'm overwhelmed by it. I 'm doing these interviews and everyone says 'I love this album' and I'm like "wow, I'm so happy.' No really, we had just come off a European tour and we were on fire but we hadn't thought of starting the next record right away. And then we literally banged this album out in three months — from the first note we wrote to it being mastered. When you do something that quickly you hope that you aren't rushing but it didn't feel like we were. Sometimes the best things you do, happen that quickly.

POWERLINE: True, because it doesn't feel staged or contrived.
Rob Thorne: Not at all. It couldn't be because we didn't even rehearse (laughs).

POWERLINE: Maybe you can give Axl Rose some tips on recording quickly?
Rob Thorne: That's what starts to happen. You start thinking about stuff too much and you lose all of that original conviction that made you want to make it in the first place. And that's what metal's supposed to be about. If it doesn't have that spontaneous energy, then in my mind, it 's not really metal.

POWERLINE: And the song "Blood Storm" ... I'll tell you, man, that song is great. Talk about energy. If that song were released in the 80s, it would have had its own colored-vinyl.
Rob Thorne: Yeah, Pat, but it's not the 80s (laughs).

POWERLINE: No, but you should release it as a single CD or something.
Rob Thorne: Well, Rhapsody just confirmed they are going to do a feature on the band and include "Blood Storm" as an exclusive free download for a week or so to promote the new album, which will happen in May. And that's a modern day single feature, you know.

POWERLINE: The band must feel the same way about "Blood Storm," you've featured it as the main song on your site for awhile, even before the album was out.
Rob Thorne: Oh yeah, when I started sending early songs to people to test what we had, people latched onto "Blood Storm" right away. And the thing that's great about "Blood Storm" is that it's a very complete metal song. It's got a lot of the things that get you excited, and on top of it all it's catchy and memorable. It's just a well put together song and what excites me about it is the first collaboration between me and (drummer) Kenny (Evans) songwriting-wise.

POWERLINE: Actually my favorite songs on the album were written by you two.
Rob Thorne: And this is the first time we teamed up that way. It's awesome to hear that. "Caught in the Arc" has had a great response, too.

POWERLINE: Did you ever think about leading the album off with "Blood Storm"?
Rob Thorne: I never thought of leading the album off with "Blood Storm" because, right away, I like to have, in my mind, the second song on a record be the kick ass song that sort of lodges itself in your mind. I don't know why that is. I don't know if it's been ingrained in my mind from listening to a lot of Ozzy. You know, he always did that. It was always "Over the Mountain," then "Flying High Again." And when we were in the studio and putting "Paradise Lost" together (the opening song), I put the chant in the intro and it just became obvious that that would become a very cool dark serious way to start the record.

POWERLINE: I've heard the guitarist Bill Smith was a student of yours?
Rob Thorne: Yeah, I taught him from the age of 13. Can you believe that? And he's 21 now. And when (original guitarist) Glen (Cruciani) said 'I can't go to Europe, I can't do the touring,' we auditioned a bunch of guitar players and they were all great guitar players but just no personality and no fire. And I said 'Guys, I want my student Bill to come down and audition. ' And he lives eats-breathes-shits this kind of music. And that's what we needed, not just some guy looking for an opportunity. So Billy just came in and he's perfect. Now he's acclimated. He did a fantastic job on the album. I'm so proud of him. I almost have this fatherly feeling towards him.

POWERLINE: Did he have stage fright at first?
Rob Thorne: Oh my God, yeah, there were times when we'd be playing and Billy would be over to the side, hunched over his amp, and we'd be wondering what he was doing. And he was puking all over the place. It took him three of four shows to get him past puking on-stage. Now, usually, he's just right out front. He's just a great performer. He's dyed-deep into the fabric of Sacred Oath at this point.

POWERLINE: Is there a tour set up to support the new album?
Rob Thorne: We are in the process of putting that together now, and there are some things on the table, but we're not committing to anything yet, because we're really waiting to see how this iTunes thing pans out.

POWERLINE: Explain the iTunes thing.
Rob Thorne: iTunes brought in someone at Apple to invigorate their metal department — Metal has statistically way underperformed at iTunes — and iTunes approached us because of the success that our live album (Till Death Do Us Part) had on iTunes — they featured the live album as one of their top live metal albums, next to Unleashed in The East and Live After Death. And now we will have this massive exclusive set up with iTunes in like a week and a half. The song "Counting Zeros" — off the album — will be the Discovery Download Pick of the Week. It's huge. It's a minimum of 300,000 downloads. To have that for a band like us, it's like a home run.

POWERLINE: Yep. I know. I sometimes download that stuff even if I'm skeptical, cause it's free.
Rob Thorne: I'm glad they picked the song that they did because I think a lot of people will download that song that don't really listen to metal. That song probably has the biggest cross-over appeal. Not only that but they are going to discount the album for five weeks at a $5.99 retail. You can't even buy lunch for that anymore and if you can get those people to come back after downloading "Counting Zeros" and pick up the album for $5.99, that would be great for us.

PART TWO: THE HISTORY

POWERLINE: Sacred Oath's 2008 live album, Till Death Do Us Part, was a successful release for the band. It was a favorite metal pick on iTunes amongst classic live metal albums such as Unleashed in the East and Live After Death. Why did you pick Germany to record your live album?
Rob Thorne: We didn't pick Germany. We didn't even plan to do a live album. That is what's so beautiful about that album. This was the first time we've been on a European tour. We had been invited to the Keep It True Festival in Germany, in this hall full of crazy German metalheads, and it was a really peak experience for us. And at the end of the show I was walking by the soundboard and there was this guy with a laptop hooked up. I asked him what he was doing and he said, "Oh, I recorded the show." I asked, "Can I get the discs?" So he mailed the discs back to the States and I mixed it. Got a live album out of it and it's a damn good show.

POWERLINE: What's cool is that you didn't prepare to record a live album, so the outcome was all the more natural.
Rob Thorne: Oh yeah, that's what makes me laugh. When people review the live album it has been like 'Oh, it's like Unleashed in the East' and all this stuff and I'm like, 'Oh my God, we didn't even sound check.'

POWERLINE: And Judas Priest's Unleashed in the East is probably the best live metal album out there.
Rob Thorne: That's my favorite live album of all time! And with us — because we were at a festival — we literally jumped out there, plugged in, and ripped through our set ... and to have it come out the way that it did... I mean, Darkness Visible began this whole resurgence stuff for us, but the live album just put stuff totally over-the-top. And the funny thing about it all is everyone was like 'Don't put out a live album. No one's interested in a live album. Live album's don't sell and you're making a big mistake.' And that's when we pretty much separated from Sentinel Steel Records because they didn't want to do it. So I put it out (note: issued through Rob Thorne's own Angel Thorne label in 2008) and it just took off.

POWERLINE: Well, a lot of times, it feels as if bands put out live albums as filler, to take care of the quota from their record contract. And live albums tend to often feel that way... like an obligation.
Rob Thorne: Yeah, like you said, there can be bad feelings associated with it.
POWERLINE: But you can tell when the band and the audience are into it and something special happens. And Germany completely eats your kind of metal up ...
Rob Thorne: ... they totally do ...
POWERLINE: ... just classic power metal and old school stuff and they just love it over there. Some times I feel like America really never caught on to the power metal thing like it should have.
Rob Thorne: Well, you know, America is very fickle. We're constantly being bombarded with one fad after another. And it's really not like that in Europe. The metal fans are generational over there. You know, 'My father was a Maiden fan, and I'm a Maiden fan, and my son...' (laughs) it's crazy.

POWERLINE: I mean let's face it, too — American major record labels have ruined some great metal bands. There were all these bands that were good power metal, and then they put out their debut on a huge record label and it sounds like crap. Many bands loss what they originally had.
Rob Thorne: Well, Mercenary Records was completely to blame for the demise of Sacred Oath in the late 80s.

POWERLINE: What happened exactly?
Rob Thorne: The problem was, Mercenary — unbeknownst to us — was in all sorts of financial trouble. Then we saw our (debut) album release getting postponed, like, literally five or six times. And when you're 18 years old and you keep telling your fans your album's coming out soon and it doesn't ... well, that went on for over a year. Then the label wouldn't pay the studio, and the studio wouldn't release the master tapes. The studio calls and says they are going to bootleg the album so they can recoup their money. The whole thing turned into a giant clusterfuck.

Then you start you getting real agitated, and then when they (Mercenary) finally put out the album ... if you saw the original album cover of that record, you would freak out (see below). We were just horrified. They didn't even talk to us about it. And after all the postponing of the release and then they hand us that. It was demoralizing. It has since gone on to be a classic in its own way. And we are going to reissue the album with its original artwork, we think. It's taken on its own little level of appeal. At the time, we just wanted to burn Mercenary Records down.