Review by Greg on October 25, 2026.

Denmark's Sacrificial sparked my curiosity for two reasons: they were founded in the early '90s by guitarist Kræn Meier, who also briefly played with Hell's Domain and Danish metal giants Artillery, and they were a thrash metal band conceived when the genre was basically in its death throes. All of this suggested that their 1993 debut, Forever Entangled, could be anything from a late-to-the-party, forgotten classic to utter garbage of the kind (too) many of their peers had the guts to release during those years, or anything in between. There was no way to tell beforehand. Even the band logo, awkwardly slapped onto the (cool) artwork inside that ugly-ass black box, fails to inspire much confidence. A certain amount of caution was therefore necessary when approaching this record.

Nevertheless, considering what the world of metal was going through at the time, this is far from offensive. Staying within Danish borders, Invocator were releasing Weave the Apocalypse around the same time, and while the two albums share plenty of similarities, Forever Entangled is generally faster and thrashier. That's immediately apparent on the opener, 'Edmund, a Butler's Tale', although its disjointed, stop-start structure doesn't accurately represent the album as a whole. The pulverizing salvos of 'Contents of Logical Disbelief' and 'Destitute of Compassion', however, are as deadly as thrash could get in 1993 and will no doubt get some necks moving. The former also features an almost Biohazard-esque, clean-ish refrain, a puzzling choice that sticks out like a sore thumb. 'I Fall in Temptation' fares better without resorting to such tropes. The riffs are chunky and probably down-tuned, with the sludgy production adding to their weight. I can even hear occasional flashes of early Entombed in the solos, which are unfortunately few and far between. 'Thus I Cry' delivers another surprising, anthemic refrain, made all the more unexpected by its arrival four minutes into the song. This is in keeping with the general impression that most tracks are somewhat too long and too slow for their own good. Still, this is a respectable effort through and through. Things could have been much worse — and typically were.

Sadly, Forever Entangled is also dragged down by John Hansen's uninspiring vocals, which fall somewhere between hardcore shouting and the sound of someone trying to sound aggressive without quite pulling it off. When you have carefully constructed lyrics like:

Neglecting my acts of ignoration
To you I only feel destitute of compassion
Assaulting me with your perfidious demagogy
You're twisted in the ways of insanity

and they're all delivered in the same atonal, shouted voice; it's hard not to think of Dark Angel's Time Does Not Heal. Another trait the two albums share is the tendency to cram lyrics into places where they don't naturally fit, inevitably leaving many words slurred over. The English itself is also hit-or-miss, as the excerpt above demonstrates. There are some great lines, such as 'If this is life, I don't believe that death can hurt', alongside some decidedly awkward ones, like 'I'm alone, retardation oh I fear'. The surprisingly frequent use of the r-word might suggest that something was lost in translation.

Forever Entangled might well be someone's personal cult old-school record, but I don't see much appeal beyond its unusual timing. Nevertheless, despite seeming doomed from the start — and briefly breaking up a few years later — Sacrificial managed to release two more albums in the early 2000s...

Rating: 7 out of 10