Sacramentum "Far Away From The Sun"

Far Away from the Sun is the debut album of the Swedish black/death metal band Sacramentum. It was released through Adipocere Records in May 1996. The album features cover artwork created by Kristian "Necrolord" Wåhlin. The album's style has been compared to contemporaries such as Dissection and Unanimated, and the album is frequently considered an often-overlooked classic in the genre.

Following the release of their demo EP Finis Malorum (later reissued on Adipocere Records, to whom the band had signed in 1994), bassist Freddy Andersson and drummer Mikael Rydén left the band, "unwilling to go on after Brolycke and Karlén had decided to move to Gothenburg." Following this, Karlén switched to bass to allow himself to focus more on vocals. After moving to Gothenburg they got in touch with Johan Norman (Decameron, Satanized). Sacramentum asked him to join the band, and Norman offered to bring Nicklas "Terror" Rudolfsson with him. "Ironically, Norman stayed in the band less than six months, before quitting to join Dissection. However, "Terror" did stick around and proved to be "a perfect match"." Thus the lineup that recorded the album was Brolycke, Karlén, and Rudolfsson.

The album's style has been frequently compared to fellow Swedish black metal band Dissection. However, Chronicles of Chaos wrote that "Their style is less aggressive than Dissection, but more intricate" and "their melodic parts are usually either harmonized or have countermelodies". According to Rudolfsson, "When I entered the picture, most of the album was already written and ready to be rehearsed, but I still helped with some riffs, lyrics and arrangements." It has also been described as "cold, raw and epic", and "For most of the record tremolo guitars, blast beats and an oversaturated vocal dominate. There is a touch of Gothic Metal that a lot of the mid nineties black metal releases incorporated."

The artwork was created by Kristian "Necrolord" Wåhlin, a friend of the band at the time and who lived in the same city. Karlén later purchased the original painting from Wåhlin, and is therefore one of only three he has ever agreed to sell, along with Tiamat's albums "Wildhoney" and "Clouds". According to guitarist Anders Brolycke,

"Nisse had this vision about this special place out there for him, as he felt he didn't belong to this world and Kristian perfectly reproduced it for him." This will explain then, why, when you look closely, you realise there are no lights emanating from this ominous looking castle, hidden in some god-forsaken land. "No, and this was intentional as light means life. And there's no life to be found here."

The album was released in May 1996, almost a year after the album had been recorded. "For Anders, apart from a lack of promotion and decent distribution, this is one of the main reasons why they've not been positioned as one of the top pioneers in the Swedish scene:

"It's all about timing in the music business as to if you will succeed or not. The basic rule is the earlier the better and people count the release date rather than when the songs were made. This is why it was so unfortunate that it took so long to get the album out. Maybe everything would have been different if it was released one year earlier. But it's one of those 'what if' questions we'll never have the answers to."

The album was reissued by Century Media Records in 2013. For this reissue, the album was remastered by Dan Swanö in November 2012, with a new CD and booklet layout by Nora Dorkling, rescanned high quality album artwork by Necrolord, as well as an in-depth interview with band by Olivier 'Zoltar' Badin. A music video for "Fog's Kiss" was created to promote the album but was never used until the band provided Century Media with it to promote the reissue.

Metal Injection named them as one of the most important bands in 'blackened melodic death metal' history, writing that - along with Dawn, Unanimated, and Vinterland - "these bands embody all the best things about metal: catchy riffs and great songwriting, effective use of melody to create a narrative structure, vocals soaked in reverb, and all the brutality one needs without resorting to cheesiness or self-parody." When the album was reissued in 2012, Steffen Kummerer of Obscura named it his fourth favourite album of the year.

There was a second pressing of the album, also limited to 1000 copies. The repress version has two pages misprinted with a green shadow and the artwork seems to be more purple than blue.

A music video was made for "Fog's Kiss".

Recording information:

Recorded and mixed at Unisound Studios during June and July 1995. 

Mastered at The Cutting Room.