Living Sacrifice: Inhabit Reissue 2025 | The Return of a Classic
(2025 – Nordic Mission)
It’s a time of comebacks, reissues, and the revaluation of material that has been forgotten over time, or perhaps not so much. It simply ceased to be available in physical format.
Although Living Sacrifice never broke up, despite their silence on the recording front for several years now, the truth is that their discography had been discontinued, and only in recent years have they begun to reissue their early albums. It had already happened with their first album, NonExistent, and now it’s the turn of the tremendous and interesting Inhabit, which was originally released in 1994 and produced by Kurt Bachman and Joey Daub, yes, the same Believer, that tremendous Thrash Metal band from the ’90s.
Inhabit marked the peak of Living Sacrifice’s first lineup, and at the same time, the end of one era and the beginning of another. Their flirtations with Thrash Metal and Death Metal on their previous albums find Living Sacrifice on this album definitively focusing their music on death metal, with certain traces of Thrash still present, it’s true, but if there’s one thing that leaves no room for doubt, it’s the direction the band was taking at that time.
The result is one of the high points of their career. “Inhabit” was something fresh, innovative, full of power, crushing, and all the goodness and epithets you can think of. All this in a third album by a bunch of guys who were barely over 20 years old.
Logically, this new edition of “Inhabit” features the 10 original tracks from the original album. There are no extra tracks or bonus tracks. It is nothing more and nothing less than the album, just as it was conceived and designed at the time.
Therefore, we will not delve too deeply into already known material. However, we cannot fail to mention that “In The Shadow” must be one of the best album openings ever, and in a continuous and linked manner, “Not Beneath” makes its appearance, at half speed, stilted and with an interesting guitar section that makes it very interesting. On the other hand, “Sorrow Banished” is what best defines this work. Lots of blast beats, crushing riffs, and DJ’s (Darren Johnson) characteristic voice, which seems to go against the speed of the band, but gives Living Sacrifice that unique touch.
“Unseen” is a more jumpy track, if I may say so. Its riffs and grinding go in that direction, while “Inhabit,” logically, is the title track of this album. Its string arrangements and strident guitars make it one of the best tracks on the album.
The intro is ghostly, intriguing, but what comes next is another blast. That’s what “Breathing Murder” is all about, something that crushes you and leads to one of the best moments on the album. And it seems that Living Sacrifice saved the best for this second part of the album. “Mind Distant” is something really worth listening to. Its riffs and bass lines make it intriguing, and the same vibe seems to continue in “Darkened,” another mid-tempo track where the guitars and riffs literally blow your mind.
At the end of the album, we find the crushing “Indwelling,” and it all ends with another vulgar display of power (but this one is real, not just in the title) with “Departure,” which shows the early Living Sacrifice at its peak.
After “Inhabit,” there were changes in the band. Not just the vocalist. Living Sacrifice went down a different path, quite different from what they had shown up to that point, but that’s another story. What is certainly worth noting is the importance of this work, not only in the history of the band, but also in terms of extreme metal with Christian content.
Some bonus tracks could have been added to this new edition, perhaps with extra material such as demos, live recordings from the period, or maybe even some tracks that had been left out.
This new edition of “Inhabit” is an opportunity to revisit this great album, in physical format, and with an obvious remastering that is not just a facelift. The audio is much clearer and heavier to our ears, with a clear emphasis on the percussion and guitars. The remastering and fine-tuning of the album is the work of Rocky Gray, a current member of Living Sacrifice but who, curiously, did not participate in the recording of “Inhabit” as he did not join the band until 1998.
One thing to note about this reissue is the replacement of the original cover with a new, high-quality illustration that follows the same style as the first edition. However, for those feeling nostalgic, the original cover that many of us first saw on this album can be found on the back of the inner sleeve. The inner sleeve has a great design, featuring the lyrics to each song and even memorabilia from the era, flyers, and photographs from those years. There is even a text by Lance Garvin recounting details of this recording. In that sense, we may have expected something more, but we think the new edition is fine; it has what it needs to have and that’s it. The good news is that along with the CD edition, a vinyl version was also released, which is to be applauded, of course.
Not long ago, in an interview, Bruce Fitzhugh assured us that Living Sacrifice is working on new music. When we’ll have news is a mystery. In the meantime, the band is reissuing its entire discography. We already knew about the new editions of their first self-titled album, NonExistent, and now it’s the turn of Inhabit. We believe that the next logical reissue would probably be Reborn, their fourth album and the beginning of the style that Living Sacrifice has cultivated to this day.
In any case, this reissue allows us to enjoy the good old days of Living Sacrifice once again, rediscovering an album that is undoubtedly one of their best works and perhaps marks the end of one era and the beginning of another.
This new and polished edition of “Inhabit” is available on both compact disc and vinyl, and can be purchased mainly through the Nordic Mission label, whose contact details are provided below. As usual, we also provide the coordinates to find Living Sacrifice on social media, follow them, and find out all their latest news. We also provide a video clip of the song “Mind Distant,” which I do not know if it is official or not, although everything seems to indicate that it is not, but at least it serves as a sample of what “Inhabit” is….
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