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Sanctorum - Ashes Of Redemption
In the year of Our Lord 2002, four friends from the British town of Colchester got together through their common love for all Heavy, fast, and loud music, and started a band under the monicker of Devolution. First concentrating on writing original material, they started to support local bands at gigs in the Colchester area, and eventually released the self-financed EP Penumbra towards the end of 2003.
Throughout the next two years, time during which the band got great positive feedback on their EP from many webzines, they continued to write new songs and gig in their region. In late 2004 the boys started another recording project, and in September of 2005 they decided to rebaptize themselves to Sanctorum to avoid confusion with a bunch of other bands with their previous name. Funilly enough, the new name isn't really an unused one in the world of brutal Metal music, as there's a Thrash/ Black Metal act in Cleveland, Ohio, and a Gothis/ Industrial/ Electronic Metal band by that name in Seattle, Washington. At least it was rather unheard of in Britain, though. Meantime, the self-financed recording project started to take serious shape, and ended up in the full-length album The Heavens Shall Burn being released on the UK's Rising Records label (who also have such interesting acts as Defenestration, Bleed From Within, Trigger The Bloodshed, Mendeed, and many more on their roster) in late 2006. Again receiving positive response from the media, the album eventually found its way to cd-players across the globe thanks to an additional distribution through the Copro network come late November of last (regretfully, through an oversight or through tefth at the postal offices – the latter having happened before – we never got a copy of that).
During February of this year, Sanctorum was sent off to the Philia Studios in Henley-On-Thames, where they recorded the 11 new songs for their sophomore album under productional guidance of Dave Chang (known from his work with earthone9, Stampin' Ground, Orange Goblin, and several Copro releases), and it's this album which now allows me to make my somewhat belated introduction to the band's material. Musically (and the influences are too many to list here, but the more curious among you may later wanna check the band's MySpace page for details), one can speak of a modern mix of somewhat Progressively tinged Heavy Metal, Thrash, and the groovy but hard drive of Hardcore, and with a rhythmic foundation which shines in its use of double bass drumming.
The band itself calls it a "...cross between Arch Enemy & Sanctity...", then tells you to "...listen for yourself"!
It's the vocals which give the songs their individual character, really. And this is where the band [which consists of lead singer/ rhythm guitar player Aaron Sly, lead guitarist/ backing singer Ash Lewis, bassist Kris Sawkins (and apparently a recent replacement for Chris Eldridge – unless they are one and the same person?), and drummer Matt Alston] seems to like to put the listener on the occasional wrong foot! Why do I say this? Well, going on the album opening songs "Carved In Stone" and "Sorrow Of Man", which sees shared lead vocals by both singers (one with a somewhat Blackened growl, the other with a slightly Goth tinged calmness) giving the very aggressive an additional Goth mood, you might be tempted into thinking this will be the mood you'll find on the album overall! But nothing is less true! The fact that two songs on the album (third track "Against Us All" and "Call To Arms") see the lead singer (the one with the somewhat Blackened growl, remember?) backed very simply with a clean singer just bringing the couple of simple chorus words (in the case of the first song, that's "Help me, save me", in the second, that's "Unite as one") gives these songs a somewhat Metal-tinged NYHC touch.
You'll find "Hope Of Salvation" opening with a verse of clean vocals in a calm passage before bursting open with the more ferociously styles singing style. More clean vocals are used for "Tales Of Horror", whichopens very calmly and with a short bit of "spoken word" vocals before short musical lashing out, after which comes another calmer passage with clean vocals...but when the song again erupts in the band's by now common aggressive mode the vocals return to their Blackened growl. "Fallen" again contains both the growl and Goth vocals, but "These Killing Hands",the album title track, and album closer "Take It All" contain growls only. To top everything off, the band also brings the very nice instrumental "The Reckoning", which sees the boys in a more sensitive/ almost sensual mood for the most part, ending in a heavier mode.
Push coming to shove, this is a really exciting album with an instant appeal from the get-go...and even more so once you've come to get acquainted with the album overall and its interesting varying vocal moods. Surf to myspace.com/sanctorum to listen to the songs (3 off the band's debut album, one of which also as video, and "Sorrow Of Man" off the new one) posted there and make up your own mind. You're absolutely free to think what you want about what's on offer there, of course, but somehow the fact alone that you've read on this far shows a motivation and hunger for this kind of music, and it may be pretentious of me to asume so, but I'm pretty sure you'll be following my example in registering Ashes Of Redemption in your year-lists!!!
98/100
Tony.
