Sanctuary - The Year The Sun Died (2014)

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Sanctuary - The Year The Sun Died (2014)

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The hope here is that the progenitor of Nevermore can be revived. Will we find Sanctuary again after all these years? Unfortunately not. Consider Refuge Denied. This comeback from the members of Sanctuary is an effort which forcibly attempts to recapture a sound which hasn't been touched upon for over two decades. The Year The Sun Died fails to reinstate the vigour of what will remain a two-time album affair, unless the band further develops from here and manages to find the style of their prime. An unlikely occurrence, if the maladjusted song writing demonstrated in this attempt is anything to go by. To dissolve from the assessment any conjecture as to whether this record sounds more clearly like Nevermore or more clearly like Sanctuary: overall, it's neither. Warrel Dane's vocals clearly don't revisit arrangements of his much younger self, more closely resembling his work with Nevermore, which is essentially the only correlative component of the sound here, which he carries over, style-wise, from all of his vocal development post-Sanctuary. The performance in The Year The Sun Died is always deeper, much lower in pitch and devoid of his screeching higher notes that electrified the style of US power metal that the band is known for, most purely projected in the debut album Refuge Denied. The guitar work here is slow and bogged down, devoid of any classically speedy Sanctuary segments and laden with well performed yet ineffective soloing, which futilely flitter on through without landing any impact that they might have had if they were delivered in a more memorable context. Overall, the record simply doesn't carry the same tone or a similar edge that Sanctuary once had, as the thrash elements are here reduced to a less effectual groove saturated sound. Bear in mind that it's not Jeff Loomis we're hearing, who wasn't on any Sanctuary record, as he joined the band subsequent to their release and before the immanent breakup of the band. As a consequence the tone, style and structure in the instrumentation as a whole, under-represented bass work of Jim Sheppard aside, certainly can't be likened to Nevermore, and neither does it revisit the same Sanctuary sound that would be expected, in part at the very least. If the purposes of this record were to replicate Sanctuary's two 90's efforts, The Year The Sun Died falls well short. However, if the purposes of this record were to produce something new under the renewal of the Sanctuary name, The Year The Sun Died delivers in this respect. The strength and dominance of Warrel Dane's performance here may give the impression that this is, in actuality, a "Nevermore plays Sanctuary" escapade, yet the groove riff centric focus here establishes something altogether different from either band. That said, it's not an entirely limp record and is possessive of enough power in the rhythm section to do the band name some justice at least, but it simply doesn't live up to the Sanctuary of old.

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