Sanctuary
Into The Mirror Black

Well, honorable colleagues, it is with great reverence that I present to you (if there is still any need) one of the most seductive metal albums of the '90s. We are at the beginning of the decade, and the industry audience was mostly drawn to both the putrid and overwhelming extreme scene and the early atmospheric moans of Gothic. Of course, there was nothing inappropriate about all this except that traditional heavy metal (''Painkiller'' by the Priest was a very pleasant exception) was sadly sliding towards swampy shores, casting many shadows on its future. And this is where the Sanctuary came into play.

In truth, Warrel Dane and his companions had already delivered a vigorous blow of white-hot metal with the debut ''Refuge Denied,'' supervised by Father Mustaine, who took it upon himself to secure them a record deal with CBS/Epic, also handling production and subsequently bringing them on tour as a support band. In just over a couple of years, the band honed their already enviable technique, teamed up, and released the jewel ''Into The Mirror Black'' presented here. 

The start is explosive thanks to ''Future Tense'': monstrous ultra-heavy riff with strong thrash influences, superb high-pitched voice, exquisite rhythmic base; everything put in place to rejuvenate and recover what seemed inexorably lost. This track remains, in the end, the most canonical and immediate of the album; from here on, indeed, the arrows that the boys from Seattle will shoot against our auditory pavilions will be lethal: ''Communion'', ''Long Since Dark'' and the power-ballad ''The Mirror Black'' excellently outline how to recreate dark atmospheres without necessarily resorting to bulky keyboard ornaments, relying only on compositional and interpretative class, while the more telluric ''Taste Revenge'', ''One More Murder'' and ''Seasons Of Destruction'' constantly float in balance between instrumental partitions rich in splendid solos and monumental refrains (Warrel Dane's vocal arcs are often breathtaking). The climate of the platter is ordinarily oppressive (imagine a preview of what ''Dreaming Neon Black'' will be) and rests primarily on arrangements and melodic solutions that are initially hard to digest but undoubtedly fascinating in their unconventional nature. The two central tracks, namely ''Epitaph'' (with its surreal and psychotic introduction) and the corrosive ''Eden Lies Obscured'', so meticulously cerebral, perhaps represent the zenith of the album in terms of chilling vitality and compositional quality; finally, there are two other elements of the work to be praised, that is, the artwork, which fully reflects the sensations that the album instills and Warrel's lyrics which are to be considered true and proper oneiric poems and mark the beginning of a path that will lead him in the future to write indelible pages of music.

Some believe that ''Into The Mirror Black'' can be considered ''The Last Action Hero'' – the last album of this genre worthy of being defined as a classic; for my part, it was truly a shame that it did not have a successor given that the two guitarists Lenny Rutledge and Sean Blosl, based on sales data, had strong disagreements with Dane and bassist Jim Sheppard (the two would later become the founding members of Nevermore, as you well know, one of the most important bands of the last 15 years) on the stylistic direction to take (being from Seattle they thought it was good and right to opt for grunge) and the combo inevitably disbanded. 

Guys and gals, buy, borrow, steal, kill, do everything within your power to get your hands on these 47 minutes of splendor; after listening to them all in one breath for the first time, I'm sure you will need a few deep breaths to get your feet back on earth.

Time is an illusion, death is not conclusion.