HADES: THE SACRIFICE is a remarkable demonstration of what happens when an artist refuses to separate the album from the experience surrounding it. Martinez could easily have built a conventional greatest-hits set around a handful of HADES tracks, particularly given the popularity of her earlier material. Instead, she chose the riskier route: eighteen songs, presented as a single theatrical journey, with spoken interludes, elaborate props, constantly transforming backdrops, astonishing dancers, multiple stages, extravagant costumes and visual sequences that routinely approach the surreal.