Merchants Of Air
  • Home
  • Reviews
    • Albums
    • Concerts
  • Interviews

Phendrana - Sanctum: Sic Transit Gloria Mundi

10/3/2018

Comments

 
black metal / progressive
bandcamp
facebook
Picture
Sometimes when an album comes in, I'm immediately charmed by the whole project. That happens mostly when the whole package has been taken good care of and because the accompanying letter is do damn friendly. That was definitely the case with this album. It brought a smile to my face while I was walking up the stairs to my apartment.

The artwork is excellent, the biography was nice and the intentions are interesting. Phendrana "tried to contribute with something new and innovative in the black metal scene". Admit it, that sounds exciting, no? Did he succeed?

Well, before answering that question, we have to take a few things into consideration. First of all, it's not easy to bring something innovative into the already massively varied black metal scene. Many innovative black metal acts have a sound that is already far beyond the genre boundaries. Second, this album was recorded between October 2016 and November 2017. It took the artist over a year but being a one-man project, that is the normal course of events. However, somewhere in that year the artist celebrated his seventeenth birthday. That is very young, considering the fact that there are guitars, drums, bass, keyboards and vocals. Most seventeen year olds are glued to their Playstation or Tinder nowadays. This dude decided to become a creative generalist and try to make an impact on the metal scene. 

For that I'll take my hat of. 

However, I think Phandrana should take a bold step and leave the black metal world behind him. If this really is one person playing all these instruments, if one person can easily remind me of everything between dark ambient, progressive metal, doom, gothic rock and whatever you want to categorize Pink Floyd as, this person is way too talented to be a black metal musician. I do not mean that in a bad way, on the contrary. Most people won't take black metal seriously and this talent should be taken seriously. He doesn't even have to change that much. Leave the screams behind and he'll enter the realm of progressive metal, like Opeth, like Dream Theater. Mixed with the gothic feel of Tiamat, Moonspell and Epica.

So, that leaves me with one question. Who to recommend this album to if not to black metal fans? Well, let's just say that every fan of progressive rock and metal must surely check this out. Fans of the nineties Götheborg scene will find heaps of sweet riffs. Nostalgic gothic metal fans will love the female vocals by Vera (Caelestis) and the strong rock feel of the whole thing. Post and sludge metal fans will certainly appreciate the cathartic vocals and so on. This is simply excellent progressive metal, one that proves that there is still plenty of talent out there and that modern music doesn't necessarily have to suck.

Well done, very well done.


​Serge

p.s. All of the above aside, closer 'Gjenganger' is my new favorite black metal song...


Comments
    Picture
    Support Merchants Of Air, check our our shirts

    Categories

    All
    Acoustic
    Alternative
    Ambient
    Americana
    Avant Garde
    Blackgaze
    Black Metal
    Blues
    Breakcore
    Classical
    Country
    Crust
    Dark Ambient
    Dark Jazz
    Darkwave
    Death Metal
    Doom
    Downtempo
    Dreampop
    Drone
    Drum & Bass
    Dungeon Synth
    EBM
    Edm
    Electronic
    Experimental
    Folk
    Folk Metal
    Funk
    Glitch
    Gothic
    Grindcore
    Grunge
    Hardcore
    Hard Rcok
    Hard Rock
    Heavy Metal
    Hip Hop
    House
    Idm
    Indie
    Industrial
    Jazz
    Krautrock
    Lo Fi
    Lo-fi
    Martial Industrial
    Math Rock
    Metal
    Metalcore
    Musique Concrète
    Neofolk
    New Wave
    Noise
    Noise Rock
    Nu Metal
    Pop
    Post Hardcore
    Post Metal
    Post Punk
    Post Rock
    Power Electronics
    Power Metal
    Progressive
    Psychedelic
    Psytrance
    Punk
    Rock
    Shoegaze
    Sludge
    Soul
    Soundtrack
    Southern Rock
    Space Rock
    Stoner Rock
    Symphonic Metal
    Synthpop
    Techno
    Thrash Metal
    Trance
    Trip Hop
    Vaporwave

Find us on

facebook
google+
twitter
tumblr
​
minds

About Us

Contact
FAQ
Logos and banners
© COPYRIGHT 2015. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.