After two 7"s released on Last Episode (now known as, surprise, surprise, Neon Knights!), Sanctimonious Order play it wisely releasing a mini-CD. It is a wise move, because the band's metal is simply too ordinary.

Sanctimonious Order play blackish metal in vein Swedish and Norwegian pioneers. Switching between blasting and more epic slow parts, throwing nice evil and melancholic melodies every now and then while sound echoes like in halls of ice is surely nothing new. Opener and closer are boring songs, but slower '13 Acres of Hell' and the title song do have some interesting things going on. It seems that blasting equals boring here. And vocals aren't good at all, there's no power in raspy throat. Familiarity in every corner is the biggest problem and keeping in mind that the band started back in 1997 only makes this feel more ancient in a bad way. This has been done countless times in the past by countless bands. And still there will be more of the same stuff coming out... From countless bands! Come on, try to create something remotely individual, please!!! And this is addressed to those countless bands, not only to Sanctimonious Order, who aren't worst, not even close.

Performance of the band is good enough, but whole sound is rather lame. It does not bite, not even bark. Best thing about it is distant echoes of coldness. Dissection's masterpiece 'Storm of the Light's Bane' (1995) cannot be beaten on this sense, but at least Sanctimonious Order tried it. But Dissection's classic is a tough one to be beaten musically and I do not understand why countless bands even try it. Sanctimonious Order fall flat on their faces if they continue monkeying Swedish masters of darkness. A tad comic style cover painting looks great, but there's Grim Reaper sitting on his stony throne... Now I do not want to mention the name of those Swedish masters any more...

Rating: 3 (out of 10) ratings explained

Reviewed by Lane
10/01/2003 14:26