This past June, SACRED REICH guitarist Wiley Arnett spoke to The Meista – Brews & Tunes about the progress of the songwriting sessions for the follow-up to “Awakening”. He said: “It’s been an amazing process. We didn’t do a record for a long time for several reasons, but one of the biggest is the well had kind of run dry. We lean hard on Phil for a lot of the writing — a hundred percent of the lyrics and almost as much music. And if he’s not feeling it or inspired, then there’s really nothing for us to say. And after a long time sitting away and then coming back and starting to do the reunion shows, we got a taste of it again. And then a crazy world — our kids are getting older, moving out, graduating high school. It was easy to talk yourself out of getting busy in a band over the years. So between a lack of inspiration, no new ideas and a sense of, ‘We should be at home doing important stuff,’ we definitely did part for a while. But 2007, we got back out. We went nearly 10 years just banging out old songs — ‘Surf [Nicaragua]’, ‘The American Way’, ‘Death Squad’, ‘Independent’; all the old stuff — having a blast. Every show felt like a high school reunion for us, seeing guys with the wizard stripes, just like us, and just reminiscing about all the great times or that time they saw us in New Jersey in 1989 or ’91 or somewhere in France. And it’s been so cool to go back and reignite those connections. And it was just inspiring. And then global events.

“We’ve always been a political band,” he continued. “I think when you look at ‘Awakening’… Some people were, like, ‘Oh, Trump came around. All of a sudden they were inspired again.’ If you look close at ‘Awakening’, there’s a little splash of it, but it’s really not the theme these days. We certainly reserve the right, ’cause we’re so motivated that way to try to make people who might not hear those messages actually hear ’em through metal.

“But it feels good. It feels inspired. It doesn’t feel pushed. It feels natural. It would have been ideal for us to record or release something by the end of this year, but we felt pressure for that, and we resisted it. We were, like, ‘No.’ It’s not the best strategy on paper, but it’s just gotta come when it feels right. We play the songs we love. We enjoy our most success when we’re pleasing ourselves and then we find the people who agree with us. So we’re kind of figuring out our stuff. ‘Awakening’ was a great start. We’ve got two more records on our current deal. And, obviously, we’re not writing the third one just yet. But the second one, I think we’ve got six or seven songs that are all the way there. We’d like to see 10, 12 songs. Of course, we never get that high. But that’s a goal. And we don’t really write songs for throwaway. We’re not one of those bands who do 20 songs and pick their favorite 10. We just write until we feel like we’ve got a record, and then we book studio time. So we’re moving right along. We’re feeling pretty inspired.

“We got pretty busy this year,” Wiley added. “It’s been crazy. We started off in March in Asia, Australia and New Zealand, which was quite the adventure. We’d never been to a couple of those spots, like Bangkok, Thailand; Singapore, Vietnam — we’d never been to any of those places. So it was pretty frickin’ amazing. And then we came home and did the U.S. tour and now we’re preparing to go to Europe. So that can stifle creativity. We’re not one of those bands with the headphones in the backstage or in the basement in a club writing the new record. It seems to happen when there’s time off. The smoke settles. We calm our thoughts and be creative. So we’re just coming off about a month of that. It’s been a crazy time. But we can feel the momentum picking back up. And I think we’re on target — hopefully early 2024 in the studio, with a release by the end of the year.”

“Awakening” was released in August 2019 via Metal Blade Records. The LP was produced by Arthur Rizk, who has previously worked with CAVALERA CONSPIRACY, POWER TRIP and CODE ORANGE, among others. The album marked SACRED REICH‘s first release since the return of drummer Dave McClain.

“Awakening” was described in a press release as “a timeless collection comprised of blistering thrash, crushing grooves, killer solos and socially conscious lyrics that demonstrate a true understanding of everything that matters most in the world today.”

“Awakening” was engineered by John Aquilino and was mastered by Maor Appelbaum.