I think you have to erase the Container from an external boot drive like a High Sierra USB thumb drive installer or a High Sierra clone. The Recovery HD is a volume inside the Container. So, if you boot to the Recovery HD you would get the same or similar error.
Erasing the Container should give you the formatting drop-down so you can choose Mac OS Extended (Journaled). And title the volume as Macintosh HD. This would get rid of APFS and go back to HFS+. You would then need to reinstall High Sierra and migrate your accounts, data and settings from a current back up.
Look at this link for preparing a Fusion Drive for High Sierra. The 1st set of instructions talk about erasing the container from an external USB installer of High Sierra. And I have used these instructions on a non-Fusion Drive to get rid of APFS and go back to HFS+.