S A N C T I F I C A
Sanctifica - Negative B (C.L. Music) 2002
1. "Labels" (5:58)
2. "Stardust Inc." (7:28)
3. "Epitaph" (4:40)
4. "Lavender" (7:49)
5. "Red Alert" (7:53)
6. "Nerve" (6:32)
7. "Juxtapose"
...I. as a reminder (3:34)
...II. confront (6:09)
...III. summer sits here raining (6:09)
I actually have owned this CD for several months now, but hesitated listing it on this site as I really wasn't sure what to say about it, or if I was even going to be keeping it. To be honest, at first I didn't care for it, but I kept coming back for another listen and each time I did I started to see the brilliance of the songwriting being revealed. Imagine a reformed Psychotic Waltz went death metal, then add in some Paradise Lost and you might get an idea of what to expect here. This is an awesome progressive death metal CD. It has slow ethereal parts, heavy plodding parts, crunchy death grooves, clean vocals, growled vocals, flutes, choirs, technical songwriting, and stellar musicianship. There are also some intreguing keyboards here and there as well. "Red Alert" is a good example of how the keys interract with the heavy guitars to create something that is musically interesting. Despite the 'death' label there is actually a wide variety of styles on this disc, including some doom, classic metal, thrash metal and neo-classical influences, along with the occassional death metal grind. The lyrics are interesting as well, focusing on spirituality from a Christian perspective. However the lyrics themsleves are very poetic and sometimes abstract, so the 'Christian' label shouldn't scare off anyone. Fans of progressive metal really need to check this CD out, it will be worth the investment.