'Sacrifice' is an album that mixes electro with rock and it works so well. The Goth soundscapes are superb, its haunting and often powerful and the lyrics really mean something. Stand-out tracks include 'Scar' and 'Absolution'.

This has been dubbed along the way as the first in the dark Numan trilogy with Sacrifice followed by the unbelievable Exile and Pure. This disc is obviously where he made the leap to the dark side because it sounds as though he knows what he wants, but just doesn't quite get to 100% of it. Exile is the 100% marker. Still, this is an awesome stack of tunes that kinda shed light on the storyline (I seem to find one in these three discs all throughout, they all connect somehow). Sacrifice is the naive persona, which I believe is reflected by the more positive upbeat beats, while Exile goes in for the kill where we get a man who is stepping into darkness, and Pure which seems like some kind of afterthought of the whole experience (man knows "the truth", sees it for what it is, accepting it, but wishing the past could have been different). I have deduced several different theories on these discs. My main overview seems to be that there is the loss of a child or loved one, seems to be more like a child and wife/mother, somehow incorporated into a man who discovers that God is no better than the devil, is given visions of this fact...God finds out the man has seen the truth and comes down to snuff him out. Indeed, a very dark tale. The music is the real treat. Now, to explain the subject of this article (the shame). Exile and Pure sound crisp and clear to the max. What's up with the sound quality on Sacrifice? I even had a skip during play and it was a new disc! The disc skips in the same place every time. A noteable difference is the disc itself though. It looks as though there is a haze (or what looks like shadow from water), I can't really explain it. I've got hundreds of discs and I've never seen this before anywhere. It looked like this when it was new. I hate to think that all of the pressings of this disc sound so muted as well. The songs are way too good for them to turn out like this. I listen to Exile and just want Sacrifice to sound as crisp and when I put it in, it's just too obvious, the sound quality sucks. Maybe it was Numan trying out new equipment for the first time or something. If anyone can shed some light on this little (what I'm hoping is just a dead on arrival CD) problem I find with the Sacrifice disc, please e-mail me. I'll gladly purchase another copy of this disc if it will sound as crisp as Exile and Pure. Was it production? I can't imagine that no one else has noticed the difference in sound quality.

Gary Numan is an artist I used to stickly associate "Cars" with. This recorded starts the dark industrial influence for Gary. It truely feel he began a new journey here. The song, Pray defines the overall tone of the record. Play Like God is a very cool extended mix B side. Gary continues to grow and change. He puts together quite a band too.

The record is hard driving where as Exile is slower and darker industrial style techno I suppose. For me, "Pure" takes the cake, but this is a great spin. See him live too!