Sanctuary – III
Review

A jangled  and raw shattered glass intro reminiscent of that skylight scene from Suspiria starts off Sanctuary‘s third offering: III. With that brief intro aside, the presumably one man band rips right into a claustrophobic blast of under produced and purposefully cluttered black metal most akin to Emperor‘s earliest effort Wrath of the Tyrant (sans frog vocals and III‘s much louder). The vocals get the best of this compressed analog production and really carry songs when the riffs become indecipherable admist tape hiss and the drums.

The production, no doubt, is the line which will separate listeners who will enjoy or dislike this release. Black metal enthusiasts who seek LLN tapes, dig the whole Black Twilight scene and know their Rhinocervs tapes by heart will no doubt eat this up. For those unaccustomed to Sanctuary and their ilk of shittier recorded-than-thou, they might find some comfort in well placed riffs in opening track “IIX” or the mid-paced smash towards the middle of “IX” which relies heavily on the bass (surprisingly as in you can hear it here). Not to say this is everyone’s cup of tea, far from it, but as far as these anonymous  tape only demo black metal bands go Sanctuary’s quite good and probably wouldn’t want everyone (or maybe anyone) to like it.

“X,” the closer, is my favorite of the tape simply because of the abstract feedback torrents and clean guitar ending that foils the harsh lurch of stretched strings and sharp pinches that open it all up. Another factor to Sanctuary’s success are the nuances of noise and the droning nature which plays off of the poor production quite well.

Put out through Fallow Field, this tape’s probably lost to bizarre and barren distros or hip shops that think no details on what you’re about to listen to is cool. I might be wrong, but could be part of Mark McCoy’s world of nameless, noisy black metal and Fallow Field might be his doing.