SACRED OATH guitarist/vocalist Rob Thorne talked in length to Metal Asylum in New Jersey about the band's longevity, their first release A Crystal Vision" and the new self-titled album. The following is an excerpt:

Q: Sacred Oath released A Crystal Vision in 1987 and didn't record a follow up until 2007 for Darkness Visible. Why such a long hiatus?

A: "Well we were young when we recorded A Crystal Vision, we were just in high school so people don't realize being at a young age that was one of the contributing factors to why the band broke up after that album. When the shit hit the fan in '88 it was easier to just say "fuck this" and walk away and we were too immature to realize what we had with Sacred Oath. Then when we got older we knew it was time to get back together. I mean we did put out an official bootleg called A Crystal Revision, which has a strange story behind it but we really didn't have any new material until Darkness Visible.

When the band split I went to college for four years for music composition and got my degree, I wrote two rock operas (one called America the Beautiful), I did two albums with SOUNDSCAPE. So I've always been busy. And when we got together in 1998 to do the bonus tracks for Sentinel Steel it was great but being busy with our lives/projects at the time getting back together wasn't gonna happen. In 2005, all of a sudden I had time and by this point Kenny and I had been hangin out a lot and I said to him, 'you know, Sacred Oath is probably the best thing we had ever done', because there was this love for what we achieved on that first album and it had survived for all those years in between Crystal Vision and Darkness Visible. I mean when we went to Europe people were showing up with the original vinyl pressing of A Crystal Vision and there is something special about that. So that's how we set about getting Sacred Oath back in action. The rock operas came about because I was very into prog metal in the 90s and not into that whole hardcore/extreme metal thing, like the PANTERA Phil Anselmo vocal. I'm a melodic singer and there was no way you were gonna see me sing like Phil. The rock operas are cool but not my best work, haha. I'd like to rework those."

You can read the entire interview at Metal Asylum.