Sanctorum - Semper Fidelis

As I have previously mentioned, I've been a big fan of Sanctorum for ages. I got their first album on a whim and thought it amazing. I have pre-ordered the last two. I'll be seeing them live at the end of next month. This last few weeks has all been very exciting, waiting for the imminent arrival of their 3rd album, Semper Fidelis.

Release day finally arrived and I began my daily vigil, watching the doormat for any sign of a roughly CD sized packet. Then one day, there it was! I opened it up, looked at the artwork, read the little book, generally appreciated the form of the thing.

I put it in the player and got ready to be blown away. My mind was buzzing with superlatives ready to splurge them into Blogger. I pressed play, and it was ... well, it was alright I guess.

Anticlimactic, ain't it? All that build up. Don't get me wrong, it's a fine album, but it's definitely a grower. At first I just didn't get it. The vocals aren't as deep or powerful as before, and they seem to be buried in the mix. There are more clean vocals this time, more slower paced sections. In some places it sounds a bit whiny and gothic. In others it starts to sound a little, um, crappy metalcore.

When the album is good, it's really good. A bit thrash, a bit melodic, a lot death. The riffs are strong and the drums are thundering. Having listened a few times, I've come to realise that it's only two tracks that make me double-take and wonder what the hell I've got on the iPod. Those tracks are Severed and Empty Glass, or the "crappy metalcore" one and the "whiny gothic" one respectively. Every other track on the record is superb.

Sanctorum have always been proud of being genre-defying. They play their own music how they want to play it. The don't limit themselves to the labels applied to them by others, and I respect that. It does have a tendency, though, to include bits that not everyone will like.

The more I listen to it, the more I'm hearing the bits I like and accepting the parts I don't. It would, unfortunately, frustrate my obsession compulsion to keep albums together to remove the two tracks I'm not that keen on. I must keep them together and appreciate it as a whole, or not at all. For Our Sins, Son Of Perdition and All We Are stand out as being particularly listen-worthy. Dying Breed has echoes of THSB in the opening riff, and that riff seems to run on into the following two tracks, Burn Away and Crown Of Scars. The album feels cohesive, with riffs and breaks shared between tracks so there is a thematic feel to the album.

And so it is. This is a mostly good album, but it's not finished growing on me yet. I'm not sure it ever will. The Heavens Shall Burn shall continue to be my usual Sanctorum hit. One day it might come on shuffle and I will gain a new appreciation of it. Or when I see it played live in April it will all make sense. You never know with these things.